![]() ![]() ![]() Gem of the Ocean is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1904, four decades after Emancipation, in the safe home of a beloved spiritual healer named Aunt Ester, who is here given an exquisitely gritty performance by Stephanie Berry that is reason enough to rush to see this show. There are only ever seven characters onstage in this majestic production-three of them former slaves-but it is as if multitudes of Africans lost crossing the ocean or sold in chains are evoked and recollected with every heartbeat and breath.Īugust Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, now playing at Round House Theatre, is the first in his masterwork series of ten plays, which each were framed in a successive decade in the twentieth century (among them such hits as Fences, Seven Guitars, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Two Trains Running). ![]()
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