By SHARON EBERSON
Mark Clayton Southers kicked off opening night of Two Trains Running by announcing that everyone present was now a part of history: Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company was about to complete a second round of all 10 plays in the August Wilson American Century Cycle.
As history-making goes, Saturday was a night of two plays running in the Hill District, where Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson spent his formative years, and where he set nine of his plays, one in each decade of the 20th century, about the Black American experience.
Two Trains Running, representing the late 1960s, a time when the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power were in full swing, is at Madison Arts Center in the Upper Hill, through August 30, 2025. Fences, set in 1957, can be seen outdoors in the Lower Hill, at the August Wilson House, through September 6, 2025.
I experienced them back to back, in their opening weekend; both are part of PPTC’s ambitious, inaugural August Wilson American Century Cycle Experience, with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom arriving August 15.
In 2015, a year awash with tributes for what would have been August Wilson’s 70th birthday, PPTC first produced Fences, which Southers said at the time was purely coincidental.
“I don’t get into the birthday thing. I celebrate him all year,” Southers said back then.
August Wilson would have turned 80 years old on April 27, 2025.
‘TWO TRAINS RUNNING‘
Tony-winning, Oscar-nominated Fences is the better known and much honored of Wilson’s plays, a searing portrait of a disillusioned middle-aged man and the havoc he wreaks on his family. Two Trains Running likewise has a Broadway pedigree, having launched the stage career of Laurence Fishburne and earning a nomination for best play.
Directed by Southers, Two Trains Running introduces a found family of Hill District denizens, who congregate in Memphis Lee’s diner. Following Wilson’s frequent theme of the failures of urban redevelopment on the Hill, the diner is about to join a stretch of demolition, with the City of Pittsburgh paying for shop owners and residents to leave.
Memphis will accept nothing other than a big payday – $25,000 – and he’s willing to fight for it.
Art Terry, continuing a 20 year association with PPTC, is the beating heart of this production as Memphis. The title refers to the trains that run daily between Pittsburgh and Memphis’ hometown in Mississippi, representing the diaspora of Black people escaping Jim Crow. But the title has more to it.
In the original Broadway Playbill, circa 1992, Wilson wrote, “There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both. To live life with dignity, to celebrate and accept responsibility for your presence in the world is all that can be asked of anyone.”
Memphis has made justice his overriding purpose. Cheated out of land he bought in Mississippi, he will not allow the City, nor wealthy funeral home owner West, to lowball their offers. West is played by an impeccably fine-tuned Sheldon Ingram, who is empathetic on the one hand, but business is business. He is willing to budge to a point, but Memphis will take only $25,000, “and not one dollar less.”
The diner also is a second home to Holloway, whose long-winded philosophizing includes pearls of wisdom, with the best advice any of the characters receive: Get yourself into the presence of Aunt Ester, at 1839 Wylie Avenue, heed her advice, and your life will change for the better.
Manny Walker shines as Sterling, a young man who arrives on the scene as an ex-convict anxious to find work, agitated by the effort and drawn to the Black Power movement. He also has his mind set on marrying Risa (Amira F. Jackson), whose smile is as rare as good news.
Events take place over the course of a days-long funeral and burial service for Prophet Samuel, a preacher and community leader, with West arriving daily at the diner for his slice of pie — and continued attempts to talk Memphis into taking his offer, instead of haggling with the city.
Amid the aspirations of Memphis, Sterling’s attempts to find work, and Risa’s rallying to get through another day, we find other diner regulars: numbers runner and self-professed ladies man Wolf (Boykin Anthony), and Hambone (Loaf Thomas), whose plight has historical significance for the times.
Hambone “wants my ham.” For more than nine years, he has waited across the street, outside of white business owner Lutz’s meat shop — the real-life Lutz Meat Shop existed on Centre Avenue in the Hill for many decades, and was set aflame during the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The insistent Hambone demands the ham he was promised for completing a paint job; Lutz has said he did a poor job, and will give him only a chicken. But one-track Hambone wants his ham.
The first act of Two Trains Running is a slow burn, as these characters drum up the past, chew on present indignities, and look toward the future, as the turbulent 1960s come to an end. The second act crackles with purpose, a train on a mission to get to its destination for each character.
The production design by Southers has diner vibes, checkered tablecloths and all, and a nostalgic juke box. There are hooks where a man can hang his hat, and a window booth to look out on the tumultuous world outside the diner, while individuals express their pain and make their plans within its walls.
This is a more intimate Two Trains Running than the most recent August Wilson play at Pittsburgh Public Theater, in 2022. The previous Pittsburgh Playwrights’ production starred Broadway veterans Eugene Lee as West and the late Wilsonian actor Anthony Chisholm as Memphis.
In 2025, Ingram’s West and Terry’s Memphis are forces of nature, fitting for a Pittsburgh company dedicated to keeping August Wilson’s work alive and running.
Note: Wali Jamal will be playing Holloway, replacing an actor who left the show for personal reasons.
‘FENCES‘
Kevin Brown makes a triumphant return to the demanding role of Troy Maxson, the now iconic middle-aged ex-con, “rubbish” collector and family man, who lives a life filled with anguish and regret. He drinks too much, and rages against the world that cheated him out of his right to play in Major League Baseball.
Pittsburghers may recall that Brown previously played Troy for Pittsburgh Playwrights 10 years ago. It’s a role known universally by theatergoers and moviegoers via two of America’s greatest actors: James Earl Jones, who originated Troy on Broadway, and Denzel Washington, who played it on Broadway – both won Best Actor Tony Awards as Troy. Viola Davis won a Tony and Academy Award as Troy’s wife, Rose, in the Oscar-nominated, Pittsburgh-shot film version of Fences.
With the August Wilson House as the backdrop, the sounds of helicopters and dogs barking piercing the night, Brown and a cast of Pittsburgh actors once more breathe life into self-destructive Troy, his wife Rose, played by the inestimable Karla C. Payne, and all those in their orbit.
Troy hasn’t given up on life. He has aspirations — to become Pittsburgh’s first Black driver of a sanitation truck. That’s one side of Troy. In another, fueled by alcohol and the weight of obligations, he lashes out, mostly at his strapping young son, who dares to dream.
Corey (16-year-old Pittsburgh CAPA student Kymir Cogsdell-Freeman) is a high school football player who has attracted the interest of a college recruiter. His father would have him learn a trade and make his way in the world, apart from sports. Despite Rose and Bono arguing that baseball and football in the 1950s is becoming more integrated — the Pirates have that Puerto Rican kid, Clemente, although he’s riding the bench — Troy will hear none of it.
His 34-year-old musician son by another mother, the dapper Lyons (Mils “MJ” James), always shows up on Troy’s payday, looking for a loan, and his brother, Gabriel (Les Howard), is a source of relentless guilt for Troy.
Gabriel walks through life with a metal plate in his head, seeing angels and hellhounds since suffering an injury while fighting in World War II. His medical benefits have helped Troy buy a house for his family.
As Bono, the always engaging Sam Lothard is Troy’s fellow worker and best friend who tells it like it is, and Troy will listen. Bono declares that the only two ballplayers who could best Troy, a Negro League power hitter, were Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. Troy has never reconciled the fact that he was too old to play in the majors by the time Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
The downward spiraling of Troy is written in the agony and cruelty, sweat and tears expressed on Brown’s face. Although Rose and Bono try to be there as safety nets, he is a man tilting at windmills — or in the case of Troy, grabbing a bat to beat back visions of sickle-carrying Death.
In no small measure, Rose is the hero of Troy’s story, demonstrated by Payne’s chin-up dignity in the face of an ultimate betrayal, while Cogsdell-Freeman’s growing rebellion as Corey, with Troy egging him on, is as fraught as it is inevitable.
In the heat of a summer Sunday, outdoors at the landmark August Wilson House, the scene exuded historical significance. Directed by Terrence Spivey, new to Pittsburgh but not to Wilson’s work, the PPTC production maintained a visceral quality throughout, amplified by the gravely backyard ground on which Fences now stands. It’s a place where the playwright once stood, absorbing the sights and sounds of the Hill District, in preparation for future generations to share his experiences, as only August Wilson could tell them.
with a cake (Image: Sharon Eberson)
TICKETS AND DETAILS
August Wilson’s American Century Cycle Experience: Two Trains Running is at Madison Arts Center in the Carter Woodson Redwood Theater, through August 30; Fences, outside at August Wilson House, runs through September 6; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is at Madison Arts Center’s new cabaret space through August 24. (Note: If, like me, you tend to suffer insect bites when outdoors, it might be wise to bring insect repellent to see Fences.) Tickets: https://www.pghplaywrights.org/ .
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