August Wilson’s award-winning drama about the deep effects of slavery, Joe Turner’s Come And Gone, is to be staged at the Young Vic this summer, directed by the theatre’s Artistic Director David Lan.
The play, previously staged at the Tricycle theatre in 1990, is the second play in American dramatist Wilson’s famous Pittsburgh cycle, a decade by decade exploration of the black American experience in the 20th century.
Set in 1911, Joe Turner’s Come And Gone follows Herald Loomis, who has been forced to work in a slave gang for seven years but is now searching for the wife he left behind to help him regain his lost identity. Through his meetings in a Pittsburgh boarding house, he discovers that what he is actually searching for is his rightful place in a new world.
Two time Pulitzer Prize-winner Wilson was so proud of his play, which premiered on Broadway in 1988, that he commented: “After I wrote it I said to myself: If I die tomorrow, I have fulfilled myself as an artist.”
Joe Turner’s Come And Gone plays in the Young Vic’s main house from 27 May to 3 July. It joins a 2010 season which also includes The Cat In The Hat, Sweet Nothings, Kursk, Elegy For Young Lovers, Eurydice and Sus.
MA