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Critic’s Pick
‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ Review: August Wilson’s Spiritual Masterpiece
This revival starring Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson may be uneven at times, but it still unlocks Wilson’s mysterious drama.
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Cedric the Entertainer, left, and Taraji P. Henson in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.
Credit...
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
By
Helen Shaw
April 25, 2026,
10:00 p.m. ET
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
NYT Critic’s Pick
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The image of the road wends all through August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” the most mysterious and, I think, most beautiful work in the playwright’s foundational catalog. The play takes place in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse, in 1911, but what seems to be a realistic way-station drama — history seen in glimpses as roomers come and go — also shades, at times, into myth. Who passes through, and who passes over? (A road carries more than the living.)
The show makes its own journey of return in Debbie Allen’s revival, which opened on Saturday at
the Ethel Barrymore Theater
, nearly four decades after its Broadway premiere at the same theater, in 1988. This production doesn’t always travel smoothly — some of Allen’s staging elements war with one another. A few younger members of the ensemble, crucial to the play’s novelistic ebb and flow, are also still finding their footing. But Wilson’s language rushes past and over every barrier.
A decade into the 20th century, a scant two generations removed from slavery, the Great Migration draws Black southerners north, some heading to the mills and factories of Pittsburgh. There, a Hill District house — owned by the brusque Seth Holly (Cedric the Entertainer) and his kind wife, Bertha (Taraji P. Henson) — welcomes them. (A room costs two dollars a week; towels 25 cents; meals included.)
The wayfarers never stop thinking of motion or of parting: Characters in this play say the word “road”
48 times.
One recent arrival from North Carolina, Jeremy (Tripp Taylor), has picked up work paving a new street, though he won’t finish building it before he lets it bear him away. Two women, nervous Mattie (Nimene Sierra Wureh) and cynical Molly (Maya Boyd), also drift in, much to Jeremy’s delight. Henson plays Bertha as her temporary flock’s shepherd; she gives Jeremy’s head a nice little
thwack
at dinner when she sees his eyes wandering.
Image
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, standing left, and Joshua Boone.
Credit...
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Seth’s one longtime boarder, the old “conjure man” Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), has several gifts. His name comes from his talent for binding people to their “song,” his term for a person’s purpose, and to each other. In Bynum, the playwright also binds together metaphysical worlds, intertwining ancestral African root work with Christianity’s blood-sacrament. Bynum knows where the road goes: He talks about once following a “shiny man” into the realm of spirit, where he met with the dead. All Bynum wants is to find this man again — “shining like new money” — perhaps so he can cross the veil for good.
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