Powerhouse Wilson, Friel and Mamet dramas compete this weekend

Formerly a mosque, and before that a pool hall, the Amun Ra Theatre Playhouse is a cozy theatrical oasis in North Nashville, just a handful of blocks off Charlotte and directly west of the Mount Nebo Baptist Church, the organization that made the space available to company artistic director Jeff Obafemi Carr. Much of the past year was spent raising funds and refurbishing the venue, with Carr overseeing those community efforts while also consolidating his board of directors, which includes former Titans star Eddie George. ART Playhouse was launched in '08 with limited programming, but the Nashville premiere of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean kicks off its official inaugural season of plays, which will include a July mounting of Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog co-starring George and Carr. 

The playhouse is a decidedly intimate venue—not unlike a university lab theater—seating up to 50. But it's got a real box office, a welcoming lobby, adequate dressing rooms and sufficient lighting and sound equipment. Upon its modest stage, the current cast of seven excels in driving home a typically Wilsonian script, which means lengthy, dramatic speeches, potent human confrontation and a keen attention to the historical details of the African American experience. 

The setting is 1904 Pittsburgh, where blacks have settled in the post-Civil War era but still struggle to find social and economic equality. Two main interrelated plots involve a local labor dispute and a magical rite of passage for a man named Citizen Barlow (Carr), who is led to spiritual cleansing by Aunt Ester (Darlene R. Knight), an age-old mystical channeler. 

Trimmed by nearly a half-hour before its 2004 Broadway opening, Gem still runs a good two-and-a-half hours. Carr's direction maintains pace, while his rock-solid cast works through Wilson's fulsome verbiage to etch out strong characterizations. Kenneth Dozier is particularly effective as the black magistrate committed to enforcing the white man's laws, while Kenetha Rogers is an appealing, gentler presence as the housekeeper Black Mary. Elliott Robinson and Bobby Daniels bring the requisite heft to their roles as mature former slaves turned defenders of the black man's cause.  

As Wilson’s penultimate play (though set the earliest) in his landmark decalogue of plays charting African American life decade by decade through the 20th century, Gem of the Ocean fits both comfortably and inevitably into the late playwright’s imposing oeuvre.

Irish eyes
More than many a play, it takes high-caliber acting to pull off Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney. Monologue follows monologue, as the tale of an Irish woman regaining her sight is recounted in flashback from different perspectives. There's Molly, blind from an early age and now 41; her loquacious, rather boorish husband Frank; and an eye surgeon named Rice, whose stuck-in-neutral career is resurrected when his medical skills miraculously restore Molly's vision. 

Friel provides a literate, poetically crafted script and distinctive characters, and People's Branch Theatre director Ross Brooks' cast definitely meets the play's challenges, effecting credible Anglo/Irish accents and recalling the untoward events with both sobriety and engaging humor. They also pointedly enact the play's melancholy themes about the nature of dark and light, what it truly means to "see," and the freedom individuals sometimes find, however paradoxically, in limitations. 

Foremost among the players is young NaTasha O'Brien, sight-impaired herself in everyday life yet sensitively capturing all of Molly's girlish charm and courageous acceptance—even daringly, and quite winningly, serving up a carefully choreographed Irish reel. Richard Daniel is superb also as the surgeon, a man of depressed personal circumstances whose sense of professional triumph ultimately proves elusive. Husband Frank is the play's least attractive role—essentially a hidebound bumbler—but Brad Oxnam delivers it with energy, comic style and clear purpose. The evening they provide is hardly lacking in vision. 

Premium leads
As Tennessee Rep's new production proves, David Mamet's 1982 play Glengarry Glen Ross endures. Missing are the noir-ish tension and subtle softening of the noted 1992 film version; on stage Mamet's script is a tighter, leaner animal, without a whiff of sympathy for either his hustlers or their marks. The play's amoral, bullshitting Chicago real-estate guys smoke, drink and swear like sailors as they engage in their competitive games, and we're effectively drawn into their universe, which includes the oft-referenced but unseen, almost godlike big bosses "Mitch" and "Murray" and fearsome competitor "Jerry Graff." If Mamet's latter-day Willy Lomans are the anti-heroes of a dark mythical journey—riding their own version of Arthur Miller's smile and a shoeshine—then "premium leads" are the Holy Grail, the possession of which means everything: self-esteem, professional standing, a fat payday.  

Needless to say, the play's reappearance in the midst of a recessionary dogfight is skin-crawlingly apt, and under René Copeland's direction the all-star cast of manly Nashville actors brags, bribes and brass-balls its way through Mamet's staccato, incantatory dialogue. It's a successful ensemble effort all the way, with David Alford, David Compton, Henry Haggard and Brian Webb Russell leading the charge as the contemptuously desperate salesmen. If you can't withstand toxic levels of testosterone, stay home.

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.