August Wilson died before he got to see his last play, Radio Golf on Broadway. The play is the final installment in a series of ten, each a snapshot of the black experience in every decade of the 20th century. In Radio Golf, which takes place in Pittsburgh in 1997, Wilson depicts the modern day class struggle between blacks with an unlikely friendship between a real estate developer/mayoral candidate and the old vagrant whose house he wants to tear down.

Thanks to a dear friend with a Broadway hookup, I caught the show last night. The cast was filled with familiar faces from television and movies — the lead, Harmond Wilks, is played by Harry Lennix, late of 24 and Stomp The Yard. His wife is Tonya Pinkins, a Broadway and soap opera veteran.

The play was provocative, if a little long. Wilson draws a line between right and wrong that is evident by the end of the show, but it is a simplified (but necessarily theatrical) conclusion to conflicts — over redevelopment and gentrification, the widening gap between blacks of different social classes, and assimilation with whites — that are anything but cut and dry. For tickets and more information, go to Radio Golf on Broadway.

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