August Wilson's King Hedley II@Lower Bottom Playaz

A Review by Wanda Sabir

King Hedley II is the ninth play in August Wilson's Century Cycle. Set in 1985, it premiered in 1999. The story picks up the lives, loves and secrets stirred in Seven Guitars, set in 1948, which premiered in 1995. Wilson's characters carry the sins of other fathers. The disease of racism and white supremacy colors their world. Wilson's characters are trapped like Truman in a TV show. Everyone is watching. Wilson's characters think the set is real when all they have to do is stop participating in their own destruction. Walk off the set. Leave the tools of the master behind. No one does so here or just outside BAM House on Broadway in Oakland. 

Although it is 1985, it could be 2025. Trump, oops, Reagan, is midway in his presidential reign of terrorism (1981-1989). King Hedley II is a young Black man with a dream who doesn't stand a chance. King, who has recently been released from prison, says the clock is moving backwards: his life was worth $1200 when he was enslaved. Now that he is free, he is only worth $3.00 an hour. $1,200 in 1860 would be worth approximately $46,840 today. Slave wages in Pennsylvania today are $7.25 an hour.[1]

King Hedley (LBP veteran actor Koran Streets) and his friend Mister (actor Kennzeil Love) talk a lot about money-- who has money and how to get more money. Money has value. Black people do not. "During Reagan’s last year in office the African American poverty rate stood at 31.6%, as opposed to 10.1% for whites. Black unemployment remained double that of whites throughout the decade. By 1990, the median income for black families was $21,423, 42% below white households. The Reagan administration did little to address such disparities and in many ways intensified them. Furthermore, the New Right threatened the legal principles and federal policies of the rights revolution and the Great Society. Reagan appointed conservative opponents of affirmative action to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) and the Civil Rights Commission while sharply reduced their funding and staffing levels. Federal spending cuts disproportionately affected AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunch, and job training programs that provided crucial support to African American households.”[2]

King Hedley II, Wilson's ninth reel in his centennial saga on Black life, extends a story started in Seven Guitars, where a funeral is the first scene. There, we meet a vivacious young Ruby, King and Mister's fathers and Elmore, a hustler hopelessly in love with Ruby. Portrayed by Ayodele Nzinga, an older Ruby, King's mother is back. However, too much time is between the two and King doesn't want to have anything to do with the woman who abandoned him. In Artistic Director, Nzinga and Assistant Director Cat Brooks' capable hands, Lower Bottom Playaz's King Hedley II is conception, hope, and dreams of the future. King Hedley II is childbirth: blood, pain and a lingering afterbirth. Where do the dead bury the dead? And do they stay buried?

Nope. Here, the dead walk.

King visits the cemetery often. His ancestors have the answers he seeks. At home, he plants seeds in a garden where he sees growth invisible to most eyes. He sees his potential too and protects its roots. He plants seeds in his wife and pleads with Tonya (actor Niko Buchanan) to bring in the harvest. The young wife loses her husband early on to imprisonment. Hedley returns after seven years, but his absence shifts things between them.  Buchanan's Tonya is clear. She suffers no illusions that King loves a dead woman more than her. She is also clear that Black children, especially Black boys, have no future. She is having none of that in her world. Tonya is the slave mother who smothers her child rather than let it live in bondage. 

Actor Streets' King is angry. Flames roll from his persona like flint ready to explode. He is combustible. When Actor Reginald Wilkins' Elmore walks onto the set and strikes a match King's world blows up. Wilkins' Elmore is also immaculate. He changes his suit often, yet, his persona remains the same. He's cunning and dangerous.

King Hedley II is a reunion of sorts. Ruby is tired now and willing to settle for less...much less. 

Fatherlessness is a theme, but so is motherloss. How does anyone survive such losses when systemic racism makes righteous Black self-determination a pipe dream? When Elmore appears from the past like Esu Legba standing at an intersection, traffic stops—the illusion interrupted.  King has returned from prison after killing a man. He's trying to get his life together. His dream is to open a video store with his friend, Mister. They are selling refrigerators to raise the down payment on the shop. We don't see the refrigerators, but we assume the merchandise is hot. $250 is a lot, so the appliances are moving slowly. The two youngsters are joined by Elmore, a bigger con artist.  At 66, Elmore is 30 years older and has also spent significant time in prison. He, too, has killed a man.

This killing of Black men by Black men seems like a macabre rite of passage into what one wonders? Ruby says early in the play that Elmore is bad news. Run and hide all that is precious to you. He is a gambler who never loses. No one believes her; however, at the end of the play, Elmore’s shadow has dimmed all the lights. Hope has packed and moved along down the street. King Hedley is a sad story, but all Wilson's plays are tragedies. Yet, despite the horror that restricts possibly... Wilson's characters never lose hope. They never squander their joy. They know happiness, no matter how short-lived. That said, King Hedley is nonetheless brutal. Stephanie Johnson's lighting and the chorus in the form of musical interludes and prophetic exhortation do not prepare the audience for its conclusion.

King Hedley II is one of the few Wilson plays that centers a mother's story. In this production, Lower Bottom Playaz Artistic Director, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga brings to the stage a Ruby who has made an awkward peace with circumstances and once again, finds home.  The older Ruby is rather pitiful. Elements of the film Monsters Ball appear in King Hedley II. Monster's Ball is a Medea story, and so is King Hedley.  Ruby exercises no common sense in her choices of men. The second act is where we learn her secret. Ill winds are kicking up ghosts, and a disturbed ghost is not a creature one wants around.

Elmore brings stormy weather. Why stir the dead? Why rattle death's cages? Why destroy a manchild's dreams? If we were to apply intent vs. impact to Elmore's decision, we'd tell him to keep his mouth shut. But Aunt Ester, the sage whose presence in the community was a counterbalance to the evil people participate in, is gone—She is an ancestor now, and no one listens to anyone else, not even to Stool Pigeon (LBP veteran actor Pierre Scott), the resident prophet who conjures and quotes scripture contextualized within current events.

King Hedley investigates violence: interpersonal, communal, and political. It shows how a disenfranchised community can implode on itself given the proper tools. “In 1982 the National Urban League’s annual “State of Black America” report concluded that “[n]ever [since the first report in 1976]…has the state of Black America been more vulnerable. Never in that time have black economic rights been under such powerful attack.’ The stigma of violent crime also hung over African American communities during the Reagan years. Homicide was the leading cause of death for black males between 15 and 24, occurring at a rate six times higher than for other Americans.”[3] Nzinga says in Director’s Program Notes, “This play is for today. It is for the moment in which we sit…holding our [collective] breath, as safety nets are pulled away when the cost of [staying alive] rises. We have seen this movie before…”.

Stool Pigeon, Ruby's neighbor, exhorts God who is present in all the lives on stage. However, King Hedley is a play where choice, not fate, leads to unpleasant outcomes. Yes, the Hill District is in Pittsburgh, America, where Black boys are allowed to clean up after others and expected to be grateful for the opportunity. King is not grateful. He is proud of his heritage and is taught that he can be and do anything he can imagine.  This is dangerous for a young Black boy. King is noble and honorable despite the mistakes he makes. He expects justice and learns there is no justice for him. I love the scene where he, Mister, and Stool Pigeon, talk about personal responsibility and what belongs to God and what belongs to them.

In another scene, King argues with his wife about her pregnancy and why it's important to him. He shares with his wife how seeing his victim's headstone at the cemetery where he visits his late wife troubled him. He says he hadn't thought about all the lives he harmed when he killed another person. King Hedley is also a story about unresolved grief. All the characters are grieving something or someone or both. King realizes and says so to Mister and Stool Pigeon. He says killing another person did not increase his stock value or raise his self-esteem. In fact, when he took another person’s life, it diminished his humanity. It was a moment of reckoning that passed too quickly. In the second act, King is back with vengeance. He is more determined now to start his own business, to be someone he can be proud of.

I think about Tupac's poem, The Rose that Grew from Concrete.[4] Hedley is that flower surrounded by other seeds. The ground is so hard all around him; it’s hard to push up to the light. Aunt Ester's red door features prominently in the set which is an open yard, two tenement apartment buildings, and a garden out front where King is stewarding his garden. The seeds are newly planted, so there isn't much to see yet, but King is excited about the possibility.

Beauty is present. Hope is present. There is an excitement Ruby allows herself to feel before reality crashes in on her. King is also excited. He can see his dream realized.

A flowerbed also shares space with a graveyard--the Babalawo, a term meaning "Father of Secrets," actor Scott’s “Stool Pigeon” casts spells. He is a holy man. Everyone in the "yard" respects him, even though he supposedly ratted on somebody. In African culture, there is no good or bad; things just are what they are. As reality sets in, resignation vies with acceptance, sorrow with hope. Trauma does this to a community.  Characters run away from social and political indignities. However, they eventually must face the situation that frightens them, the circumstances they grieve over. "Why can't we all get along?" Rodney King asked. Why indeed? Elmore has a soul wound he is determined to clean. It doesn’t matter that his recovery will cause great harm.

Most of the elders on the set are carrying secrets. Some secrets need to stay hidden. 

In recovery communities, we learn to examine our motives.  King goes to the graveyard to examine his motives, to talk it out, to let tempers cool. But he runs hot, and Elmore likes to wager. King is also a gambler. Elmore’s revelation upsets a precarious balance.  There is blood as in kinship and blood as in violence. Stool Pigeon says that when the body dies, one is not dead. The older man plants flowers and says blood will guarantee rebirth. 

Wilson’s King Hedley is a layered cake with secrets hidden inside. Perhaps a better analogy is a bible with a hollow center. In prison breaks, it holds a gun. The ending is a stunning tabloid.

The metaphor of circles or spheres of influence is mentioned. The question asked is what if your circle is eclipsed by another's? Ruby's space is not consecrated. She is trying to make amends to her son. He wants to forgive her, and then hesitates. They even dance in Act 2, Scene 4. Perhaps King Hedley is an atonement work? Are the wrongdoers looking for forgiveness, peace?

Relationships are another theme in King Hedley. When King asks Mister why his girlfriend left and took all his furniture, Mister says she wanted him to change. I don't know how the outcome could have been any different in King Hedley, but it is sad. Aunt Ester is the woman people would travel from great distances to tell secrets too. She is dead now. King told secrets to his dead lover. Aunt Ester also helped people who'd done wrong reset their moral clocks. In the absence of her guiding hand, the mortals are clumsy and mess things up.

King is a product of the Hill. He is Aunt Ester's child, too. He is trying to make things right, recover, and make amends for the sins of his fathers. I am rambling. It's a great story. The acting and direction are superb! Wilkins is an amazing Esu Legba crossed with Mephistopheles! Beware y'all.

We wonder what choices Ruby had when she learned she was pregnant. The saga ends, but the characters keep the story alive long after the curtain closes. No theatre company does August Wilson like Lower Bottom Playaz, which means the production directed by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, LBP Artistic Director, and Ms. Brooks, Assistant Director, is an experience one doesn't want to miss. King Hedley II is closing this weekend: Friday-Saturday, November 28-29, 7 pm, Sunday, November 30, 2 pm downtown Oakland @BAM House, 1540 Broadway. 

For Tickets, visit The Lower Bottom Playaz Box Office

 

---

[1] In California, minimum wage will be $16.90 an hour January 1, 2026.

[2] https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2ay/chapter/african-american-life-in-reagans-america-2/

[3] https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2ay/chapter/african-american-life-in reagans-america-2/#:~:text=Ronald Reagan's America presented African, nomination in 1984 and 1988.

[4] The Rose that Grew from Concrete