Joe Turner's Come and Gone: A Play in Two Acts

The Century Cycle #2

by August Wilson

When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911 after seven years' labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man—in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left behind, believing she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, African American, Theatre, Classics, Historical Fiction

Library Binding

First published October 1, 1988

About the author

American playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for Fences in 1985 and for The Piano Lesson in 1987.

His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.

Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.

After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.

In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.

Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.

Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.

Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.

In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.

Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.

Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .

In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .

Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.

In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.

Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.

Reviews

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is on my lifetime bucket list to finish August Wilson’s epic century cycle of plays. I had gotten off to a good start reading 5 of 10 but then stagnated. I figured February was an appropriate time to complete another play in the series, this time taking me back to 1910s Pittsburgh a city still at the crossroads of reconstruction and modernity. Wilson’s story and characters are well crafted and always a treat to read. With only four plays remaining it will be a bittersweet moment when I finish this project and may just have to reread some of my favorites.

4 stars

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the second in August Wilson’s “Century Cycle," is an effective and moving play. On the surface, it gives us a realistic and affectionate depiction of an early 20th century Pittsburgh boardinghouse, and of the aspirations and sorrows of the African-Americans who live or visit there, striving to make a living in the prosperous but often difficult north. On a deeper level, however, it is the story of the spiritual and political awakening of a people toward a greater understanding of the word “freedom.”

The poetic realism of August Wilson’s style makes use of expressionist techniques: archetypal characters, rhetorical declamation, and mythic and magical imagery, to name a few. As is often true of expressionist drama—witness the early O’Neill and the later O’Casey—although the individual effects may be powerful, the construction of the plays itself is sometimes defective. When Wilson creates a few forceful personalities—as he does in Fences, for example—such defects are not obvious. Unfortunately, as in Joe Turner—when Wilson task is to manipulate a large number of interesting but not compelling characters—the structural defects begin to show.

The most entertaining characters in Joe Turner are the owners of the boardinghouse, Seth and Bertha Holly, whose affectionate bickering provide much of the humor of the play (and much of the essential exposition too). From a thematic point of view, however, the two most important characters are Harold Loomis and Martha Pentecost. The wandering deacon Harold Loomis, confined to Joe Turner’s work farm for seven years, has now come north with his daughter to search of his wife, but what he needs most of all—as the old conjure man Bynum Walker knows—is a new “song,” a new spiritual anthem. Martha Pentecost, his born-again wife, needs to be united with her daughter and to come to terms with Loomis and her past. The problem is that Loomis’ only tells his story in the second scene of the last act, and Martha first appears in the final scene of the play. The result is that the major themes of the play—finding a song, coming to terms with the past—appear almost like an afterthought.

Still, Harold’s and Martha’sLoomis’ narratives are compelling when they come, and the many interesting characters of the boardinghouse present the audience with a vivid portrait of black America in the second decade of the 20th century.

I’ll conclude with what the old conjure man Bynum has to say about the importance of a song:

I didn’t know what I was searching for. The only thing I knew was something was keeping me dissatisfied. Something wasn’t making my heart smooth and easy. Then one day my daddy give me a song. That song had a weight to it that was hard to handle. That song was hard to carry. I fought against it. Didn’t want to accept that song. I tried to find my daddy to give him back the song. But I found out it wasn’t his song. It was my song...It got so I used all of myself up in the making of that song. Then I was the song in search of itself. That song rattling in my throat and I’m looking for it. See, Mr. Loomis, when a man forgets his song he goes off in search of it...till he find out he’s out it with him all the time.

[Vanessa M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm floored. This was phenomenal. I need to sit with it for a while and then write up a few words about this play set in Pittsburgh, 1911. I have Gem of the Ocean :1904 on reserve at my local library.

I had the same reaction with Fences. Why do Wilson's plays resonate? I'm not sure, but what I can say is that for me, every character I can see. I can hear. I can relate to. I can learn from. I can react. Seth, Bertha, Bynum, Jeremy, Mr. Loomis, Zonia, Martha Pentecost---are so real, so relatable.

Bertha's line about happiness being love in one hand in laughter in the other brought tears to my eyes.

[Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is play number 2 in the August Wilson Century Cycle. To me this play was fine but like "Gem of the Ocean" (Wilson's first play in the cycle) I feel like it could have been better. Two down, eight more to go.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

That's all you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

I'm continuing to explore my new boxed set of August Wilson's Century/Pittsburgh Cycle, a generous Christmas gift from my sister.

Set in 1911, just a few years after the events in Gem of the Ocean , this play takes place in a Pittsburgh boarding house owned and operated by Seth Holly, a skilled craftsman and ambitious entrepreneur born to free Black parents in the North, and his wife Bertha.

The rest of the cast is made up of the various guests, new and long-term, young and old, former slaves and the generation born after Emancipation, who pass through this boarding house over the course of a few weeks.

I didn't find most of the characters to be particularly interesting or well-developed, although I'm sure the right actor or actress could squeeze far more out of the words on the page. And honestly not much happens, which made for a slower read than expected.

The bulk of the "action," if it can be considered that, consists of the various boarding house guests talking, eating, arguing, gossiping, flirting, singing, laughing, and dancing with each other. The only real drama or suspense is sparked by the sudden appearance of Herald Loomis, a troubled and mysterious stranger who shows up at the boarding house with his young daughter, searching for a wife he hasn't seen in nearly a decade.

Much like the first play in this series, this is one that begs to be experienced rather than read. So many of its best and most memorable moments involve sound and spirituality and music, demanding to be seen and even more importantly, heard: a joyful, riotous dance/"juba" session around the kitchen table; a scene where three of the characters break out into cathartic, contagious laughter; and a climactic mental breakdown that involves one of the characters speaking in tongues and having a mystical vision.

These moments, no doubt transcendent and moving when performed on the stage, feel sterile and strange and small on the written page.

Despite the lack of narrative movement - or perhaps because of it? - Wilson still weaves together an authentic and vibrant tapestry of African-American life in the early 20th century.

With one notable exception, all of his characters are displaced in some way - geographically, maritally, romantically, spiritually, etc. Cut off from their ancestral Past and struggling to figure out their Futures in a country where the very concept of "freedom" itself is still new, elusive, and threatened at every turn by a racist and corrupt legal system.

As a written text, I'm only giving this 3 stars, but I'm sure a skilled creative team with the right ensemble cast could easily turn this into a 4 or 5.

Up next: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, followed by watching the new Netflix adaptation starring Viola Davis. Can’t wait!

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is set in a Pittsburgh Black boardinghouse in 1911. During the Black migration to the industrial North, former slaves/sharecroppers came looking for jobs and a new identity. The play incorporates African mysticism and spirituality. It would be very powerful on stage, especially the scene with the Juba song and African drumming.

The titular Joe Turner is based on Joe Turney, a plantation owner who illegally enslaved Blacks in the early 20th Century. He was the brother of the governor of Tennessee, and rounded up Blacks for his chain gangs on minor charges like loitering or gambling. He lured Black men to crap games, then arrested them. Turner kept the men enslaved for seven year terms. A wife asking about her missing husband might be told, "Haven't you heard about Joe Turner? He's been here and gone." Black women originally sang the song about their missing men, and it was recorded by the blues singer, W C Handy.

This is an excellent play with themes of identity, trauma, religion, inequality, and migration. Everyone has been looking for something--a home, a mate, a job, their missing family, religious faith--since Emancipation freed the slaves without a good plan for their future. "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is part of August Wilson's Century Cycle about the Black experience in the 20th Century.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong, distinctive characters and the flowing music of their speech are the hallmarks of August Wilson’s plays. Play structure and traditional storyline not so much. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is no exception. From the first scene onward, when we are introduced to Seth and Bertha and the denizens of their boarding house, Wilson draws us into the orbits of their personalities and the lilt of their conversations. Through these simple devises Wilson is able to address a wide range of issues, including the the survival of folk magic spiritualism (Bynum), destructiveness of Southern Jim Crow chain gangs (Herald Loomis), Northern systemic discrimination (Seth), religion as a solace and escape (Martha), and religion challenged as just another means of control through the white man’s God (Herald Loomis).

Having read each of Wilson’s Century Cycle of plays now, it seems clear that Wilson was doing nothing less than creating an entire cultural mythology of African Americans. These plays serve as a focus to recall, remember, and reinterpret their history — not just in the decades of the 20th century where the plays are set, but going back to memories of slavery and reconstruction, even stretching back to the important date of 1619 when the first enslaved African stepped ashore here. That is why several of the plays (including this one) have pronounced magical/supernatural elements — realism alone is insufficient for a complete mythology on this scale.

Something else that stands out to me is Wilson’s bold challenge to resting in the solace of religion. He never backs down from challenging either the necessity, the competence or the motives of the white man’s God, despite also showing in his work how central faith is to some in the community. One of the strongest scenes in this play is when Loomis burst into the boarding house kitchen as others are dancing and singing Holy Ghost songs. Shouting to stop it, he makes this impassioned speech:

You all sitting here singing about the Holy Ghost. What’s so holy about the Holy Ghost? You think the Holy Ghost coming? What he gonna do, huh? He gonna come with tongues of fire to burn up your woolly heads? You gonna tie onto the Holy Ghost and get burned up? What you got then? Why God got to be so big? Why he got to be bigger than me? How much big is there? How much big do you want?

At another point Loomis describes Jesus as a white man with a whip in one hand keeping count of the cotton. These are strong attacks against the basis of a faith that is often central to Black communities, and while Wilson also nods to faith’s importance to the culture (as he does here with the character of Martha Pentecost), he never actual refutes the attacks made on it, or actually has his character repent of making them. This, to me, shows Wilson’s absolute boldness in the conviction of his own mythologizing — a fearlessness that made his plays work.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1911, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone takes place in a Pittsburgh boarding house run by Seth and Bertha Holly, an island of stability in a house-full of restless transients. Seth is gruff and no-nonsense, laying down laws of respectability. Bertha is warm and embracing, both a mitigator and an antidote to her husband. Bynum Walker is a conjure man, he helps folks find the song that binds them to another. Herald and Sonia Loomis are a father and daughter come to look for wife and mother, having been separated when Herald was taken off by Joe Turner’s chain gang years before. After his release, he found his daughter but not his wife. There is also a young woman, Mattie Campbell, whose man has gone off and a young man, Jeremy Furlow, who works on a road building crew and plays guitar at back road gambling places.

Additional characters add complexity and flavor to this drama of displacement and the search for one’s place in a world roiled by the presence of history unresolved wounds. Just as slavery sold human souls regardless of family; Joe Turner’s labor gangs were comprised of boys and men who were snatched without crime, trial or sentence, with their families with no word or sense of when and if they would ever return. In one vile form or another Jim Crow sent many African Americans north to escape slavery’s bloody repressive second act, a diaspora of fractured families from the country to the city, from the fields to the factories, from segregation to ghetto.

It is a courageous exodus because the odds of success are long and distant in time. Victories will be mostly incremental, measured in generations, hence, I think, the span of August Wilson’s cycle: a century. The transients in the Holly boarding house are at a way station on the post-bellum underground railroad hoping to find themselves. “You got to be something,” Herald is told, “You just can’t be alive. Life don’t mean nothing unless it got a meaning.” Some seek meaning in love, some in religion, some in respectability, some in luck’s false promise of prosperity, some don’t find it at all or find it in a self-destructive rebellion. In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone the displaced play out their search in prose that is near to poetry. I am three plays in to the ten play cycle and some of the most highly regarded are still to come. The plays to date have all stood, like Herald Loomis here, on their own, but they are also beginning to aggregate into a linked American masterpiece. Eugene O’Neill imagined such an epic cycle of plays but his creative life did not last long enough to execute it. August Wilson’s may just have.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the play set in the teens in Wilson's long decade by decade Pittsburgh cycle. Here, the owners and residents of a rooming house are stirred up by the arrival of Loomis, a mysterious man who we come to find is trying to find his wife after years on a chain gang. The play is about the aftermath of slavery and in some ways, each character represents a response to that horrible legacy. Seth, the boarding house owner, is trying unsuccessfully to get a business started and is all about work, order, and numbers. His wife Bertha is ever-accommodating of everything she encounters. Bynum is a conjure man who has turned to spiritualism and magic in his attempt to "bind" people back to each other and their nature as humans. Jeremy is a musician who just can't stay put, in a job, in a place, or with a woman. Mattie is hoping to reconcile with the husband who deserted her after she lost two babies, but she may be willing to settle for Jeremy. Molly may be a prostitute. They're all getting by when Loomis appears with his daughter. He's looking for his wife, but it's unclear whether he wants to reconnect with her or harm her.

Everything in this play is haunted by the past. The only white character, Selig, is hired to help find Martha, Loomis's wife, but his skills as a finder take on a horrific cast when we find that they were passed down from his father who used to hunt runaway slaves.

I'm not sure that I'm sure about what Wilson is getting at with the very last moments of the play, but otherwise, I was completely captivated by it. There's a lot of suspense and tension built, even though the plot of the play is rather oblique, and if you're like me, your mind will be spinning with the possibilities as you read or watch the play. Think I'll have a go at Fences next.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow! That was deep!
I do enjoy all of the brilliant August Wilson's plays. They all are true to form stories of the African American community through the times. They all invoke an element of religion and spirituality. This one...I feel like August was a little more symbolic than maybe I can grasp on one read through. Not to say that this is not a good play/book. So far, I believe that anything that August Wilson put his pen to was a skilled account of some story viewed through the window of real people's lives. Or maybe I'm just partial because he was one of my city's native sons. I enjoyed the banter of the characters as I always do. I think I get some of the many points but I honestly believe that if this play was a little bit longer..maybe the characters would have developed just a tad more. I will say this wouldn't be my favorite play but still good.

I give it a 3 1/2 out of 5. If this is performed as a stage play that I can go see, I'd love to see this. Sometimes it helps to have a visual. Also, since it is said that actor/producer Denzel Washington will be making movie productions of all of the Century Cycle plays I'm looking forward to seeing this brought to life on that platform as well. I do recommend it. I will be continuing to read all of the plays.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

My bucket list item of seeing all of August Wilson's plays is nearly complete. Joe Turner and Ma Rainey are the only two I haven't seen yet, so I thought to at least read Joe Turner when I came across it at the library (but reading it doesn't count for the bucket list; all of these plays are so much better seen performed).
I love Wilson's work, and I loved this play. Wilson's Pittsburgh cycle of plays each takes place in Pittsburgh in a different decade of the 20th century. This one takes place in 1911. Seth and Bertha Holley own a boarding house in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Bynum Walker is a "conjure man" and a long-term tenant. Other, shorter-term tenants drift in and out, including an ex-con, with his daughter in tow, who is looking for the wife who abandoned them, and various young people looking for love. This play is most similar to Gem of the Ocean, the Pittsburgh cycle play which takes place right after the turn of the century, in that it portrays the deep cultural memory of slavery, family separation and the further separations in the wake of the Great Migration north. The theme of the play is a desperate need for connection in an environment of separation and change.
White people never come off well in Wilson's plays. Just when you think maybe Selig, the white peddler, is maybe pretty decent, you find that he's not blameless. This is true of all of Wilson's white characters. White people don't often appear on stage. Instead, like Joe Turner, they are a lurking, oppressive offstage presence. When whites do appear, they are generally less deliberately evil, than just casually, cluelessly evil; they disregard blacks, treat them with casual cruelty because deep down they can't quite credit them as being as human as we are.
Like Victor Hugo with the 19th-century French proletariat, Wilson has great compassion for the lower and working class blacks of 20th-century Pittsburgh, and that compassion illuminates and dignifies all of his work. His characters are often feckless and foolish, but they are allowed their dignity by this amazing playwright who died way too soon.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/

[Rose Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In college, I had a professor named Dr. Swan who taught a survey of lit through early modernity course. What most would call inaccessible and boring literature, Dr. Swan brought to life through what he called "participatory imagination," encouraging us to imagine ourselves as members of the troops at Tilbury, listening to Queen Elizabeth I's speech, smelling her urine-soaked skirts.

I know I need to bring my participatory imagination to these Wilson plays I've been reading, but I feel like I need a Dr. Swan to guide me through. I'm finding it difficult to know the context and nuance of the two plays I've read so far. I'm picking up on common themes but also feel I'm missing out on key points.

I coincidentally found someone else on Goodreads who is also tackling August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle in 2021, and he mentioned struggling through the first two but finding his groove with Ma Rainey, so I'm hoping a similar thing happens for me.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

August Wilson is a genius. This one went a little over my head. I think it’s gotta be seen on the stage because so much of the climatic scenes seemed rooted in the energy between characters and not the text itself.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic, lyrical and completely aching with the need to be loved, and finding human connection. Herald Loomis, and Bynum will live on as fully fleshed out characters that are beyond great roles- but unforgettable human beings. What a lovely play. I also had the privilege of seeing this on Broadway in 2009 starring Chad L Coleman as Loomis, Ernie Hudson, Arliss Howard, Latanya Richardson-Jackson and Roger Robinson in his Tony Winning performance. Wow.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joe Turner's Come and Gone is the second play in August Wilson's Century (or Pittsburgh) Cycle. As with the first play, Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone is full of memorable characters living out their slice of African American life in 1911 Pittsburgh. The setting is a black boardinghouse run by Seth Holly and his wife, Bertha. The two compliment each other well. Seth is a stern, no- nonsense man who is not going to put up with crap from anybody, least of all his boarders. Bertha is the mother hen, prone to giving them the benefit of the doubt. Many of these boarders have endured heart-breaking circumstances. They are sad, bewildered, and angry at their lot in life, but they survive. Despite what people have thrown at these former slaves or descendants of slaves, they soldier on, making the best of what they have. The most difficult to comprehend is the life of Herald Loomis, who, seven years ago, for no reason whatsoever, was randomly plucked off the street he was walking down and consigned to a chain gang. Why would white Joe Turner do this? Because he could. The blacks he "hand-selected" for his chain gang had no legal protection, no rights, no dignity. Herald simply vanished off the face of the earth, leaving his wife and daughter behind, wondering what could possibly have happened to him. How did Herald get off the chain gang? Joe Turner released them as a birthday present to himself and they were expected to be grateful for this. Those seven years have broken Herald and it's both grievous and infuriating. Anyone who says African Americans should "get over it," should be forced to read this so they understand why it's so difficult to do that.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read Wilson's work it is becoming clear that the supernatural moments in some of the plays act as the peak of the plot. When it works really well, it will haunt a reader or a play goer for days on end. Such is the case with this play. He is known for his plays FENCES, which has no supernatural incident, and for THE PIANO LESSON, which did not really work for me in it's climax. JOE TURNER on the other hand left me anxious to see it performed live. It is the second play in the Ten play cycle and comes after GEM OF THE OCEAN. Even though these plays were written years apart, the similar tone and experience that permeates each play is extremely noticeable. I think I will always hold GEM as my favorite, but this acts as a sort of natural sequel to it.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent 2nd play in the Century cycle.

[Stella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great script!

[Raymond Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each play we read in the Century Cycle seems the best. But we know that Wilson considered Joe Turner his favorite. Here are some notes from our discussion at OLLI-dc.org.

Week 4 – Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (notes)

1. Largest cast of any Wilson play so far. 12 counting the ever-present Joe Turner, 15 with appearance of Miss Mabel, plus the unseen Eugene, plus Jack Carper.
2. Said to be Wilson’s favorite play in the cycle. Based on Romare Bearden painting, Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket.
3. Herald Loomis is the Wilson Warrior, but Bynum and Bertha play significant supporting roles.

4. Themes that recur:

*Blood as a means of cleansing, baptism, lifting the veil
*Finding one’s song is finding one’s voice, discovering a sense and practice of agency
*The relationship between Bynum’s Shiny Man, called One Who Goes before and Shows the Way, a sort of First Man, and Loomis’s first name, Herald, i.e., a messenger, a sign that something is about to happen. A play on words.
*Selig, the white “trader.” Buys and sells pots (sustenance, basic necessity) and finds lost people (only because he carried them away in the first place). WD Fard. (Martha started at the Holly house and was carried away by Selig. That is why Loomis said he could smell her there and knew she wasn’t dead)
*Bynum’s (Bind them) spirituality helps people, but still doesn’t give him his song completely, until he witnesses the return of the Shiny Man who self-baptizes, self-realizes, self-actualizes, and self-transcends (to use Maslow’s framework).

5. Play Structure

*Exposition: Scene 1: the boardinghouse; Bynum’s spirituality; Seth’s superiority complex; Selig, the trader
*Rising action: Arrival of Herald Loomis, Seth’s distrust.
*Climax #1: End of Scene 1. The Juba dance scene, Loomis’s disapproval and the performance of his own “act” within and via the old slave and minstrel celebration, aided by Bynum.
*Falling action: Seth’s growing distrust and decision to evict Loomis; the Mollie/Mattie/Jeremy love triangle.
*Resolution: Loomis fails to romance Mattie; future prospects for Reuben and Zonia; Loomis departs the House (but we feel him watching from a distance)
*Climax #2/Denouement: Martha Loomis returns to the House and reunites with Zonia; Loomis self-baptizes and self delivers; Bynum sees Shiny Man (in Loomis) and finds his agency at last.

6. Explaining the end of the play.

It can be argued that the end of the play is a bit whacked, poorly constructed, or just plain flawed. I propose that taking such a position would be both inaccurate and incorrect. Of course, we would love to see Martha and Herald reunited and marching off into the sunset with their darling little girl, Zonia. But I contend that the play was never intended to be about Martha and Herald, but about Herald (the Wilson Warrior) and his development and, take a deep breath, about Bynum and his final fulfillment. Let me set the scene.

In Act 1 scene 1, Bynum told Selig, the trader and People Finder, about a man he was looking for, a Shiny Man he met on a road who once shared with him the Secret of Life. Bynum said the man asked for his hands, then rubbed Bynum’s hands between his own hands that had blood on them and said the blood was a way of cleaning himself. Soon the road changed, the surroundings changed and “everything look[ed] like it was twice as big as it was.” The cleaning with blood was clearly also a type of enlightenment, a baptism of sorts, preparing Bynum for a future task. During the same experience, Bynum saw his father, who told him he would show him how to “find my song,” and explained that the Shiny Man Bynum had earlier seen was “the One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way and that

“Said there was lots of shiny men and if I ever saw one again before I died then I would know that my song had been accepted and worked its full power and I could lay down and die a happy man. A man who done left his mark on life.”

OK. Hold on to that thought . . .

Skipping forward to the end of Act 1 scene 4, the House folks have come together on a Sunday evening after dinner to do a Juba, a minstrel/African cultural celebration that involves dancing, singing, and invoking the Holy Spirit. Everybody is there and participating except Herald. When Herald arrives, he goes off the deep edge, questioning the existence of God and the Holy Ghost. He goes off into a bit of a other worldly experience, “dancing and speaking in tongues.” he then says,

“You all don’t know nothing about me. You don’t know what I done seen. Herald Loomis done seen some things he ain’t got words to tell you.”

Bynum comes to his aid, walks him through his exposition of the vision he has seen, learns about his vision, and walks him back from the edge, so to speak, and back to this world and sanity. We won’t go into the details of that vision here, but suffice it to say that elements of the vision are significant, the bones rising and walking on the water, the bones sinking all together all at once and forming a tidal wave that washes the bones, now clothed with flesh, black flesh, ashore, but still inanimate. Then a wind enters the bodies and brings them to life, and Herald Loomis is one of those bodies come to life, except at that point, unlike all the others, Loomis cannot stand up, or as he says it “My legs won’t stand up.” At that point, I think Bynum knew spiritually and at some level that he had found, at least potentially, his shiny man. But that more development would be required.

OK, moving forward to the end of Act 2 scene 5 (the stuff in the middle is not insignificant, but we can come back to it later if we have to), Martha returns to the House, Loomis returns, and Martha thanks Bynum for reuniting her with her daughter Zonia. Loomis takes offense at that and accuses Bynum of “binding” him to the road, to a life of wandering around and dissatisfaction. Bynum denies it, and at this point, Loomis draws his knife, followed by a type of call and response that tells us with finality there is not going to be a future with Martha and Loomis together. Their apartness has developed them into different people than they were before when they were together. AS Herald says, “Joe Turner’s come and gone.”

Then at the height of the exchange, Loomis draws the knife across his chest, drawing blood, then rubs that blood over his face, replicating, in some ways, the same blood cleaning and self-baptism that Bynum experienced in Act 1 with the original shiny man. Similarly, Loomis comes to a new awareness as a result of the blood baptism. Finally, he is standing and he proclaims “I am standing! My legs stood up! I’m standing now.”

This is the completion the Loomis sought. He bids Martha farewell, and Mattie rushes out to be at his side. The stage directions Wilson inserts here are pure poetry:

(Having found his song,
the song of self-sufficiency,
fully resurrected, cleansed and given breath,
free from any encumbrance
other than the workings of his own heart
and the bonds of the flesh,

having accepted the responsibility
for his presence in the world,
he is free to soar above the environs
that weighed and pushed his spirit
into terrifying contractions.)

At this point, Bynum realizes fully that Loomis is his shiny man, that his song has been accepted, and that he has lived a life of meaning.

So, Loomis is complete. He has Mattie at his side for his next journey. And Bynum can peacefully rest.

More on the Century Series plays here: https://raymonddmaxwell.com/

[William Adam Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Turner's Come and Gone is the second of August Wilson's century cycle plays if you are going in chronological order, which is the order that I am reading through the cycle. I liked it better than Gem of the Ocean, which was the first one. This play centers around Seth and Bertha Holly's boarding house in Pittsburgh. The time is 1911. The plot revolves around the people that come to rent rooms in the Holly's home.

Seth Holly keeps his eye on the residents, sometimes with suspicion. Bertha is more inclined to treat the newcomers with kindness and keep them well fed. Bynum Walker is a long time friend of Seth's, and a kind of mystical root worker. He is said to have the ability to bind people together. Herald Loomis comes to town with his young daughter. It turns out that they are looking for Herald's wife, who they haven't seen in more than a decade. Seth thinks that Herald looks like he might be willing to commit a crime. Jeremy Furlow is a young man that has been able to get a job on a construction crew building a road. Mattie Campbell and Molly Cunningham also come to the boardinghouse, and since they are both attractive women, Jeremy catches notice of them.

One of the things that I really liked about this play is how well developed each of the characters are.
Wilson balances the play well, to make certain that each character has a chance to share their story and develop in the structure, plot, and purpose of the play. The plot conclusion is emotional and satisfying. It is a relatively short play and can be read in a few sittings, or easily in one afternoon. The themes that Wilson develop in this play are the strong bonds of family, the importance of loyalty, the ability of music to play a part in healing our lives, and trusting others to help us in life's journey. It is a play that resonated with me and had memorable characters.

[Luke Reynolds · Rating 2 out of 5]

The flap copy of this play was incredibly misleading, and I found that it juggled a lot of plot points while never quite landing on a central theme to unite its characters. Still, this is a good ensemble piece that may resonate more staged or adapted. I just wanted more from all the characters.

[Ashleigh Dubie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending alone makes this book simply incredible. At last, he is self-sufficient. He has no master, and doesn’t need an salvation.

[Llewey Watts 💫 · Rating 3 out of 5]

needed more death tbh

[Robert Jersak]

It's my winter of Wilson. Trying for one play a week. This week, it was Joe Turner's Come and Gone. It's not as tight a script as Fences, and the tension isn't as immediately clear as it is in The Piano Lesson, but it's another brilliant play in the Pittsburgh series and it cuts deep. The intense post-traumatic stress of slavery has been addressed in other great works, but it's impact on relationships - intimate relationships, familial relationships, relationships to faith - is front-and-center here. The Bertha boarding house is a pool table of sorts, in which characters, broken by the violent thrust of injustice, continue to roll, bump up against each other and try to find a safe pocket that feels like home. The characters pop in and out, each with clear nobility and faults, needs and wants. The lost soul of the play, Herald Loomis, is desperate to wash himself clean of the crimes committed against him. Whether by play's end he can or he can't is something for you all to decide, but one thing is clear - those who've served as real-life models for Joe Turner - those who actually stole human lives for abuse and servitude - will never be acquitted so long as historians and playwrights are heard.

A Favorite Passage
SETH: He just want you to do his work for him. That's all.

LOOMIS: I can look at him and see where he big and strong enough to do his own work. So it can't be that. He must want something he ain't got.

BYNUM: That ain't hard to figure out. What he wanted was your song. He wanted to have that song to be his. He thought by catching you he could learn that song. Every nigger he catch he's looking for the one he can learn that song from. Now he's got you bound up to where you can't sing your own song. Couldn't sing it them seven years 'cause you was afraid he would snatch it from you under you. But you still got it. You just forgot how to sing it.

[Ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sometimes you can get all mixed up in life and come to the wrong place."
- Bynum, Joe Turner's Come and Gone

My quest continues to get through August Wilson's Century Cycle. This time, it's Joe Turner's Come and Gone. It's 1911, the Era of the newly freed slaves making their way. Seth and Bertha Holly own a boardinghouse in Philadelphia.

Among the tenants are Jeremy, a young guitar player and Bynum Walker, a rootworker aka a conjure man. Seth runs a tight ship but the residents live in a tough but fair harmonious environment. That is until Harold Loomis and his young daughter Zonia show up. Loomis is looking for his wife, who abandoned him and Zonia, during his seven year servitude to Joe Turner.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone has a lot of spirituality and mysticism to it. This is probably because of the negro spirituals still ran deep within because it was so early in the century. It was before acclimatization and assimilation to their environment.

I sort of liked Joe Turner's Come and Gone. It just was very different from the other plays I have read in the Cycle. However, I respect and applaud that very fact because it shows just how effective a writer August Wilson really was.

I will give Wilson another credit: he sure knew how to write third acts. That's where all the drama is and it sure is a doozy. And a little crazy. Just a tad.

Literally, it's a different time and it's palpable. It's olden days. It's the long awaited taste of freedom. It's adherence to old legends. It's the encompassing belief in God.

[Ian Connel · Rating 1 out of 5]

A wretched defense of irresponsibility.

I read this for a college course and was horrified. The protagonist's goal is to find his daughter's mother so he discard his daughter and pursue his own interests. Somehow this is glorious because he is rejecting social mores imposed by whites. The evil of racism is undeniable, but children need their parents - both of them, no matter what color they are. Love is more important than racial identity.

Further, the protagonist fails to make any social impact by abandoning his daughter. When he does this, the prophet character cries, "You shining, Herald Loomis!" He neither freed himself from oppression nor poverty. He becomes a shining example of a cultural blight, and to misled bleeding hearts on campuses everywhere, pretty prose justifies pointless cruelty.

Culture is a people worshiping themselves, and this is a prime example of that happening without question.

If you have a child, you provide for them and stick around for them. Exceptions are not made for selfish pursuits. Before any argument is made to counter this, ask yourself if you would want your father dumping you off like a sack of potatoes and forgetting you. Didn't think so.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second in Wilson's Century Cycle, Joe Turner concerns the lives of African Americans living in a boardinghouse. Themes of identity and migration strongly at play here, much like with the previous Gem of the Ocean, with religious spectacle making for the more powerful scenes.

[Brian McCann · Rating 4 out of 5]

2022: Reread this play before seeing it tonight. Looking forward to how it transitions to the stage.


2017: Lyrical...perhaps a little too lyrical. There are so many metaphors at work that the narrative gets a little lost. Perhaps there is additional clarity in viewing this piece.

[Shawn Deal · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible tale of a boarding house in 1911. August Wilson sure does bring to life the struggles of these many different people all shaped by slavery, and how they try to find each other and their own personal search to find themselves.

[Litsplaining · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this play.

Full review to come.