Theater review: ‘Jitney’ at SSC

Here’s a review of August Wilson’s Jitney, which will run in Thursday’s Sentinel:

‘Jitney’ another page in Wilson’s book of humanity

By Elizabeth Maupin
Orlando Sentinel Theater Critic

When theater fans bemoan the relative lack of African-American actors on local stages, I hereby refer them to August Wilson.

Not to Wilson himself, of course (the playwright, one of this country’s greats, died prematurely in 2005), but to his works. Whenever a local theater puts on one of Wilson’s 10-play cycle about the African-American experience — and Seminole State College has done five in the past five years — some of the best actors around turn out.

They’re back in Jitney, the poignant comic drama that counts as Wilson’s first success, in 1982; a revised version circulated in the late 1990s and opened off-Broadway in 2000. Jitney doesn’t have the supernatural grandeur of The Piano Lesson or Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. But it’s a comical and moving introduction to Wilson’s writing, at once so deceptively relaxed and so pointed. And it’s a terrific showcase for actors you rarely see.

Jitney is set in 1977 in the storefront office of a jitney station, an unlicensed cab company that draws down-on-their-luck drivers. Wilson gives you his usual assortment of guys with time on their hands: Becker (Stephen M. Jefferson), the conscientious manager; Turnbo (Joe Reed), the cantankerous old busybody; Fielding (Dwayne Allen), the drinker; Shealy (Kevin Rushing), the numbers runner; Doub (Paris Crayton III), the downtrodden Korean-War veteran; and Youngblood (Michael Sapp), the brash young know-it-all.

There’s also Rena (Shellita M. Boxie), Youngblood’s girlfriend; Philmore (Jose O. Diaz), a customer; and Booster (Andrew J.R. Tarver), Becker’s son, just out of prison after 20 years.

These guys pass the time, squabbling and jawing, and they fret about what will happen — next week? tomorrow? — when the city comes to board the place up and tear it down. And the older men try to teach the younger ones how to act like men in a world where dignity and responsibility are in short supply.

Unfolding in a seedy storefront set (by Richard Harmon), this Jitney has its rough edges: The breaks between scenes go on forever even though there’s no scenery to move. But director Anthony B. Major also has brought loads of humanity to this story, and he’s led his actors to make full-blooded people out of what Wilson has put on the page.

The whole cast is good, but two stand out among them: Reed, whose irascible Turnbo is so tightly wound you can almost see the springs; and Tarver, whose troubled Booster has a grave presence that will carry him far. Wilson shows you that Booster and his father are both wrong and both right. And he gives you a world that has little to do with color and lots to do with grace.

Elizabeth Maupin can be reached at emaupin@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5426. Read her Arts & Letters blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/artsandletters.

Theater review
‘Jitney’
What: Fine Arts Theatre production of August Wilson drama.
Where: Seminole State College Fine Arts Theatre, 100 Weldon Blvd., Sanford.
When: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.
Cost: $10 general, $8 seniors 60 and over and students, free for SSC students, faculty and staff.
Call: 407-708-2040.
Online: seminolestate.edu/arts/theatre/boxoffice.