It’s only fitting that Ruben Santiago-Hudson is playing a conjurer in the current revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. What he’s doing on stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre (also home to original 1988 Broadway production) is nothing short of magical.
In the first scene, as soon as he starts talking about the Shiny Man—“the One Who Goes Before and Shows the Way”—we’re completely in his thrall. Bynum is the emotional anchor of the play, and one of Wilson’s most richly drawn characters, and there’s no better interpreter of the playwright’s words than Santiago-Hudson: In 1996, he won a featured-actor Tony Award for Seven Guitars; he starred in Gem of the Ocean on Broadway in 2004; in 2012, he directed a remarkable off-Broadway revival of The Piano Lesson; in 2017, he helmed the long-awaited Broadway premiere of Jitney; in 2013, he performed the autobiographical How I Learned What I Learned, which Wilson wrote for himself. His turn as Bynum is a performance for the ages, and one that elevates every actor in his orbit.
The remainder of Debbie Allen’s production can best be described as workmanlike, with flashes of beauty and enchantment flickering throughout. His most spiritual and supernatural play, Joe Turner is Wilson’s fourth play, but its 1911 setting puts it as No. 2 in the Century Cycle, his epic 10-play decade-by-decade series chronicling the Black experience in America, starting with the 1900s. We’re in Pittsburgh’s Hill District—Wilson’s childhood home, where all but one of the Century Cycle dramas take place (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is in Chicago)—in the early days of the Great Migration. Many Black Americans are leaving the South in search of housing and job opportunities, and many find respite in a boarding house like the one owned by Seth (comedian-turned-actor Cedric the Entertainer) and Bertha (Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson, who acquits herself well in her Broadway debut).
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The everyday routine of Bertha’s biscuit-making and Seth’s backyard metalwork is disrupted by the arrival of the brooding, taciturn Herald Loomis (The Outsiders’ Joshua Boone) and his 11-year-old daughter, Zonia (Savannah Commodore or Dominique Skye Turner, alternating in the role). He’s searching for his wife, Martha (Abigail Onwunali), from whom he was separated during his seven years of forced labor; Bynum suggests he enlist the services of Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker), a “first-class People Finder.” (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Selig, a door-to-door peddler, also appears in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.)
Herald seems to bring a dark cloud everywhere he goes, from his foreboding entrance to his Act 1-ending breakdown—an equal parts puzzling, frightening, and awe-inspiring scene in which he interrupts a joyful juba dance, hollers at God, speaks in tongues, and, most incredibly, details a vision of “bones walking on top of the water.” Bynum is there to try to lift Herald up—literally and figuratively (“What you waiting on, Herald Loomis?”); meanwhile, the rest of the cast, smartly relegated to the shadows, is moving in slow-motion, distracting us from a genuinely moving and mystical moment—not to mention from Boone and Santiago-Hudson’s intense back-and-forth.
Perhaps looking for some levity after that otherworldly incident, in Act Two, Allen leans (too) heavily on the humor: Bertha and Seth’s grumbly, affectionate banter; breakfast girl talk between boarders Mattie Campbell (Nimine Sierra Wureh) and Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd); a flirty exchange between naive and newly jobless Jeremy (Tripp Taylor) and Molly; Bertha’s unsolicited relationship advice to Mattie. But how does the self-conscious seduction scene between Herald and Mattie generate so much laughter? “Come here and let me touch you” shouldn’t be that funny.
Everyone in Joe Turner is seeking something: Bynum is searching for his Shiny Man; Mattie wants to find true love, and she’s sure love’s name is Jack Carper; Molly is looking for a man to keep her company, or just to keep her; Jeremy yearns for a better life, preferably one involving his guitar; Selig looks for anyone, as long as he gets his $1 fee; Herald is looking for his wife, as well as for his song—his place in the world, his sense of self. “When a man forgets his song he goes off in search of it,” Bynum tells him, “till he find out he’s got it with him all the time.” This is a production in search of a song.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opened April 25, 2026, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and runs through July 26. Tickets and information: joeturnerbway.com
