Characters enliven 'Trains'

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'Two Trains Running' 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays (except Jan. 30), through Feb. 8 Yellow Brick Studio $10 722-6941

"Two Trains Running" by August Wilson is a beguiling character comedy about the half dozen regulars who hang out in Memphis Lee's run-down soul-food diner in a 1969 Pittsburgh black ghetto.

The city plans to tear the place down and there's a funeral going on at the undertaker's across the street, but the folks who keep showing up for Memphis' cornbread and beans are driven by the hope of hitting their lucky numbers.

The trains in the play's title run on opposing tracks toward life and death, and it's not until the play's final moments that it becomes clear which direction will predominate.

The production is sponsored by The Actors' Group, which offers its playing space to the Honolulu African American Repertory Theatre — a group founded in 1994 by Leonard Piggee, who both directs and stars in the show. The result is a deceptively casual ensemble production that skillfully brings its characters to life by capturing their driving rhythms.

Piggee's performance as Memphis leads off as a man with unfinished business, tenaciously hanging on until he can go back to set things right. Driven off his farm 30 years earlier by jealous neighbors, Memphis now demands his own price from the city that wants to demolish his business.

He's surrounded by vivid supporting characters of varying tempo, who share common dreams.

Sterling (Derrick Brown) is fresh out of the penitentiary and banking on a financial windfall to keep him from going back. He develops an eye for Rita (Donna Sallee), a languid waitress who gashed her legs with a razor in hope that the resulting scars would keep men at a distance. Both are tempted by Wolf (Moses Goods), a slick numbers runner who used the diner to collect dollar bets from anyone hoping for a payoff.

Other regulars include the undertaker (Honey Brown), who reportedly makes his money by reselling slightly used coffins; Holloway (Gemini Burke), a philosophizing student of life; and Hambone (Russ Goode), a demented derelict who only wants payment for a nine-year-old painting job. Each plays out his own small drama against a backdrop of fortune telling, Black Power rallies and poverty — wondering whether it's best to avoid disappointment by "carrying only a little cup through life."

Piggee's ensemble neatly captures the cadence that gives the characters' speech real musical quality. Rhythms intertwine like a slang fugue, arching into intricate patterns that are punctuated by recurring refrains: "No less than 25,000 dollars," "Knock on the red door and ask for Aunt Esther," and "I want my ham."

Ultimately, the play works by drawing us into each character and weaving their fates into a real-life fabric.

It also helps that, despite the harshness of each experience, these people remain doggedly buoyant and uncompromisingly hopeful.