Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther. Aunt Esther, the drama's 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson's decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century-an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom."-Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune Gem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson's career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written."-Ben Brantley, The New York Times "Wilson's juiciest material. "No one except perhaps Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater."-John Lahr, The New Yorker "A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty.
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