Review: Despite small faults, this 'Gem' shines

A week ago, Joe Dowling unveiled a magical "Midsummer" on one mainstage at the Guthrie Theater. On Friday, Lou Bellamy gave us a coruscating "Gem of the Ocean" on the other Guthrie mainstage. The two plays complement each other, each conveying us into realms of spirits and redemption.

"Gem of the Ocean," the August Wilson drama that opened Friday in a Penumbra production at the Guthrie, culminates in scenes of wrenching beauty and profundity. The staging, with a splendid ensemble cast, offers a palpable release.

But, as the production started with diffuse momentum, I wondered if it would ever get to such a revelatory place.

There are three pieces of lint on this jewel.

First, Bellamy begins "Gem" with a sort of dumb show in which characters go about their ordinary business onstage.

Such theatrical preambles usually work in Penumbra's intimate St. Paul playhouse where the players are so close, the play might as well be unfolding in your living room. But in the scale up to the 700-seat McGuire Proscenium Stage, the dumb show seems desultory, stalling the momentum.

The second scene in this production, which is the opening scene in Wilson's original script, begins with an urgent knocking at the door. It would have more potency if it weren't underscored throughout by Malo Adams' mood-setting guitar.

And there is a faux fight in the second act that is just too faux.

These are minor blemishes on an otherwise brilliant staging of Wilson's masterwork about memory and imagination, legacy and freedom. Set two generations after slavery in 1904, "Gem" takes place in the yawning parlor of Aunt Ester (marvelous Marvette Knight). There, Citizen Barlow (edgy, innocent Cedric Mays) has stolen into the home because he has a hole in his soul. A faultless man has died after being accused of stealing a bucket of nails. Citizen Barlow knows something about it and no longer wants it on his conscience. Aunt Ester enlists her assistant Black Mary (Austene Van), her guard Eli (Abdul Salaam El Razzac) and Solly Two Kings (James Craven), the underground railroad conductor, whom she fancies, to take him to the City of Bones.

Bellamy has brought many of the play's weighty issues of philosophy, history and spirituality to the surface. He has mined and deepened many of the relationships here, making Aunt Ester less a mythic figure than a woman needing love and connection with Solly Two Kings. The relationship between Black Mary and her brother, arch lawman Caesar (T. Mychael Rambo), is even stronger.

The show benefits greatly from Mathew LeFebvre's majestic set and Michelle Habeck's evocative lighting. And there is no weak link in this cast of colorful characters rounded out by Selig (Terry Hempleman), the benign white man in an era of turmoil and peril. Craven's Solly Two Kings is a standard for the character. Mays is amazing as Citizen, and Knight gives us an Ester of electric dimension.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390