{"id":1807,"date":"2019-06-11T18:42:52","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T17:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2019-06-11T18:42:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T17:42:54","slug":"propwatch-the-seeds-in-king-hedley-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2019\/06\/propwatch-the-seeds-in-king-hedley-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the seeds in King Hedley II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Some props haul their own metaphors on stage with them.\nWhen King (Aaron Pierre), recently released from prison, sprinkles flower seeds\nover an unpromising scrub of soil outside his Pittsburgh home \u2013 well, you don\u2019t\nneed dramaturgical skills to wonder if the severely challenged little seeds\nwill mirror King\u2019s own struggle to nurture a new, post-prison life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Hedley II<\/a><\/em>, August Wilson\u2019s 2001 play \u2013 part of his ten-part cycle about the 20th-century African-American experience \u2013 is set in the 1980s. It\u2019s a period of verdant growth for some \u2013 the swaggering beneficiaries of the Reaganomics, cultivating serious money and harvesting profits from their Wall Street successes. Way out east in Pittsburgh, things look different \u2013 hard times, political blight, street violence. Green shoots of recovery are nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson\u2019s play walks with a heavy tread. As Hedley attempts\nvarious off-legit schemes to raise enough cash to open a video store (itself a\nnot-undoomed enterprise when seen from our Netflix age); as he squabbles with\nhis mother (Martina Laird), who he feels abandoned him as a child; as his wife (Cherrelle\nSkeete) announces she can\u2019t bring a baby into this world shadowed by prison and\ngrave \u2013 well, you suspect that things will end up in some kind of bad. And Chekhov\u2019s\nLaw lopes into action when Hedley compares guns with his best friend (Dexter Flanders)\nand his mother\u2019s ex-lover (Lenny Henry) \u2013 three<\/em> shooters, with another in\nreserve. No good will come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the plotting can seem over-determined, the writing is\na wild, grieving whirligig all of its own. Lasting almost four hours, Nadia\nFall\u2019s production gives everyone ample time to follow their thoughts and feelings.\nThey edge their way into fears and convictions they might never have articulated,\nor excavate memories in piercing detail. When a character\u2019s long speech launches\n\u2013 not so much a speech as an aria, each with a heartfelt whale music of its own\n\u2013 you never know where the words will take them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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King doggedly nurtures his seeds \u2013 despite people\nscorning and trampling over them (he loops protective barbed wire across the\ntiny patch), despite the neighbourhood visionary (Leon Wringer) burying an\nactual dead cat alongside. There seems no prospect of thriving, yet he tries. Is\nhe mistaken or as magnificent as his name? The soil lies at the front of and I ran\nmy fingers over its dusty nubble as I passed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performances too have a resistless lived-in weight \u2013 a\nquality cast holds the text\u2019s rhythm and gravity. Everything takes place at the\nfront of Peter McIntosh\u2019s single perspective set \u2013 achieved with a loving\nattention that the city itself doesn\u2019t afford its residents \u2013 yet each actor holds\nthemselves differently, so that this shallow space feels mighty with life and\nsorrow. Henry arrives with an easy walk and a charming smile \u2013 so to see his\nface shut down in anger is terrifying. Laird\u2019s pouchy resignation is briefly relieved\nby the strut of her days as a singer. And Pierre moves most compellingly of all:\nholding his powerful arms close to his body, kinking wrist and elbow so that\nthis man of furious muscle seems oddly fragile . Twisting like a neglected\nseedling to find some kind of light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos by Richard Davenport\/The Other Richard<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some props haul their own metaphors on stage with them. When King (Aaron Pierre), recently released from prison, sprinkles flower seeds over an unpromising scrub of soil outside his Pittsburgh home \u2013 well, you don\u2019t need dramaturgical skills to wonder if the severely challenged little seeds will mirror King\u2019s own struggle to nurture a new, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[247,66,322,321,34,603],"class_list":{"0":"post-1807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-design","9":"tag-nadia-fall","10":"tag-props","11":"tag-propwatch","12":"tag-theatre","13":"tag-theatre-royal-stratford-east","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}