Joe Turner’s Come and Gone has landed on Broadway for the third time since its 1989 New York City premiere. A critical success but commercial failure upon its original Broadway production, August Wilson’s rich and complex play has received a generally laudable revival, directed by Debbie Allen and featuring a superb cast, that captures the play’s emotional and stylistic nuances even while suffering from occasional missteps.
Part of the playwright’s ten-work cycle depicting the African-American experience in the 20th century, Joe Turner’s is set in 1911 Pittsburgh at a boarding house owned by the tough-minded Seth (Cedric the Entertainer, returning to Broadway for the first time since the 2008 revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo) and his nurturing wife Bertha (Taraji P. Henson, making her Broadway stage debut).
One day a mysterious and menacing figure, clad in a long dark coat, arrives at the front door, with his eleven-year-old daughter Zonia (Savannah Commodore) in tow. He is Harold Loomis (Joshua Boone, Tony-nominated for The Outsiders), who, we eventually learn, has recently been freed after seven years of illegal bondage to a Southern bounty hunter.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Wilson’s play encompasses so many themes and ideas that it defies easy summary. It masterfully blends naturalistic drama with supernatural and religious elements as Loomis desperately struggles to find not only the wife who abandoned him years earlier but also his own spiritual peace. He’s aided in the former quest by Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker), a white “people finder” who thinks nothing of casually mentioning that his ancestors were slave traders, and in the latter by the mystical Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) who claims to have the power to “bind” people together.
Allen’s production is most effective in the scenes depicting the amusing interplay among the boarding house’s residents who also include Jeremy (Tripp Taylor), a lecherous young man seeking his fortune as a blues guitarist; Mattie (Nimene Sierra Wureh), a recently heartbroken young woman all too vulnerable to his advances; and Molly (Maya Boyd), as self-possessed and sophisticated as Mattie is innocent.
Where the production falters are in the play’s more stylized moments, such as the scene in which Harold suffers a breakdown and begins speaking in tongues after finding the others engaging in a vigorous call-and-response song and dance, and his extreme, self-mutilating reaction when his long-lost wife Martha (Abigail Onwunali, making a strong impression with her brief stage time) suddenly reappears toward the end of the play. These are tricky episodes to stage, to be sure, and Allen hasn’t succeeded in making them fully convincing or conveying the mystical quality of the writing.
But by and large this is a terrific production enlivened by the superb performances. Cedric brings his natural comic instincts to his role as the put-upon Seth who insists that he runs a “respectable” house. Henson, so often fierce in her film and television roles, infuses Bertha with a gentle, maternal warmth. And Boone, in the showiest role, displays a fearsome intensity that keeps us on the edge of our seats.
But it’s Santiago-Hudson who steals the show as the “conjure man” who helps people find their songs, the most visible symbol of the play’s exploration of the search for one’s identity. The actor has a long history with Wilson, having acted, directed, and adapted several of the playwright’s works and winning a Tony for his supporting turn in Seven Guitars. He seems effortlessly tuned in to Wilson’s distinctive style, delivering a quietly compelling performance blending gravitas with humor.
David Gallo’s beautifully detailed set design conveys the hominess of the boarding house, with a giant backdrop displaying a vintage Pittsburgh cityscape with a large bridge and steel mill smokestacks belching gases.
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
