In director Debbie Allen’s sturdy production of August Wilson’s intense and lyrical play, Cedric The Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson portray the stable long-time married couple Seth and Bertha Holly  who run a boarding house where everybody else are transients; some brutalized, some haunted, some simply searching. They have traveled to Pittsburgh  in 1911, the start of the Great Migration of Black people from the South.  “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” the second installment chronologically in Wilson’s American Century Cycle – one play for each of the decades of the twentieth century, all but one taking place in Pittsburgh.

The play gets its title from a century-old blues song by WC Handy, which is inspired by the true story of a man named Joe Turney. At the turn of the twentieth century, he would snatch Black men to work on a plantation, in effect turning them back into slaves. Joe Turney was the brother of the governor of Tennessee, a state that currently allows local officers to assist ICE in arresting people during routine traffic patrols. This second Broadway production of August Wilson’s 1988 play, in other words, is well-timed.

It’s also well-cast.

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” eventually focuses on the story of Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) who has traveled North in search of his wife, is the most manifestly traumatized, and the scariest  (“he look like he done killed somebody gambling over a quarter,” Seth says of him.) Boone, Tony-nominated for portraying Dallas in “The Outsiders” gives the showiest performance.

But all of the characters have a story to tell, and the play is really a portrait of a time and place. Henson, making her Broadway debut, seems to understand this, and keeps in the background, allowing the others to shine, as Bertha herself does, a warmhearted presence who feeds and comforts the boarders and tries to keep her curmudgeonly husband from bothering them. Cedric the Entertainer is terrific in capturing the unique rhythms of Wilson’s monologues.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson takes on, and triumphs in, the most challenging character,  Bynum Walker, a “conjure man” with long monologues about mystical occurrences. He helps people find their song, as he puts it, or as Seth explains it, does  “all that old mumbo jumbo nonsense…all that heebie-jeebie stuff.”

Tripp Taylor  makes an auspicious Broadway debut as the charming, callow and ultimately callous Jeremy Furlow, who came up just two weeks earlier from North Carolina, guitar in hand, and already gets a  job and two women: He casually courts Mattie, then abandons her for Molly.  Nimene Sierra Wureh is sweet and heartbreaking as Mattie Campbell,  Maya Boyd captures the undercurrent of well-earned bitterness in Molly Cunningham’s flirtatiousness and cynical nonchalance  In a minor foreshadowing of the story we eventually learned about Joe Turner, Jeremy tells Seth and Bertha that police shook him down for his two dollars pay and stuck him in jail. Seth is aghast, thinking Jeremy is at fault and that it could affect the boarding house’s reputation as “ respectable quarters.” Bertha convinces him otherwise: “ You know the police do that. Figure there’s too many people out on the street they take some of them off.”

It’s the sort of brutality that’s casually threaded throughout the play. Bradley Stryker portrays  Rutherford Selig, an itinerant peddler and a self-declared People Finder, whom Herald hires to find his wife.  Selig, the only white character in the play, matter-of-factly explains how he came upon his second profession. “My daddy, rest his soul, used to find runaway slaves for the plantation bosses. After Abraham Lincoln give you all Nigras your freedom papers and with you all looking all over for each other…we started finding Nigras for Nigras. Of course, it don’t pay as much. But the People Finding business ain’t so bad.” More bracing than the throwaway comment is the absence of any reaction by the boarders.

In a recent biography of August Wilson, he’s quoted as having been inspired to write “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” by two works of art — Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket (Pittsburgh Memories), a collage by Romare Bearden, and the song by WC Handy.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Ethel Barrymore Theater through July 26
Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes, with an intermission. 
Tickets: $69 – $499. Digital lottery: $49. In person rush: $45. In person student rush: $35 (Details in Broadway Rush and Lottery Policies)
Written by August Wilson
Directed by  Debbie Allen
Scenic Design by David Gallo; Costume Design by Paul Tazewell; Lighting Design by Stacey Derosier; Sound Design by Justin Ellington; Hair and Wig Design by Mia Neal; 
Cast: Taraji P. Henson as ‘Bertha Holly’, Cedric “The Entertainer” as ‘Seth Holly.’ Ruben Santiago-Hudson as ‘Bynum Walker,’ Joshua Boone as ‘Herald Loomis,’ Maya Boyd as ‘Molly Cunningham,’ Savannah Commodore and Dominique Skye Turner sharing the role of ‘Zonia Loomis,’ Abigail Onwunali as ‘Martha Loomis,’ Bradley Stryker as ‘Rutherford Selig,’ Tripp Taylor as ‘Jeremy Furlow,’ Christopher Woodley and Jackson Edward Davis sharing the role of ‘Reuben Scott,’ and Nimene Sierra Wureh as ‘Mattie Campbell.