‘Jitney’ review: Broadway masters gritty August Wilson play
8 / 10
This is a meticulously cast, lovingly observed play about life in a livery cab station in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Wilson's home base. We are in the '70s but Wilson never burdened his decades with easy pop-sociological markers. Vietnam is closer but no less life-altering than black experiences in Korea. Many of the actors are veterans of Wilson's storytelling style, experts in the unspooling ways he defines character and plot through grand handfuls of luscious and gritty street poetry. The problems at the car service revolve around the everyday joys and heartaches of fathers and sons, wives and husbands, men and their whiskey, and the yearnings in their souls.
