OK, not double dating exactly… we shared the evening with two other close friends, 1,010 other theater goers, plus a small army of secret service and security personnel – but sitting in the Belasco Theater last night one row behind and about 25 seats to the right of the Obamas somehow felt like a shared personal experience. 

Most of those in the house who had purchased tickets to see the Lincoln Center Theater Company’s revival of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone some time ago were unaware that the first family would be there and thus showed up at the usual 15 minutes before curtain only to find 44^th St. totally shut down and a long slow moving line as everyone went through bag checks and frisking before entering the theater.  Since we purchased our tickets just the night before when our double date was finalized, we planned to have dinner on the early side at the Jewel of India just down the street from the Belasco and arrive in plenty of time to meet Barack and Michelle at the theater (they preferred to dine downtown).  As we approached the corner of 44^th and 6^th Ave. the streets were already lined with folks behind barricades hoping for a glimpse of the presidential motorcade as it made its way past.  At the corner, a phalanx of NYPD asked to see our tickets and then assigned us an officer to personally escort us down the closed off street to the door of the theater.   

So not surprisingly, with all the whoopla the show started about an hour late which only heightened the anticipation as all the buzz in the house was over where the Obamas might be seated.  Even a Meryl Streep sighting caused only a minor stir.   The audience was more diverse than a typical Broadway show which had more to do with it being an August Wilson play but nevertheless the feeling of pride in our first African American president was palpable and most everyone seemed excited to be part of the experience.  One exception was an elderly woman with a stick up her ass, loudly complaining that the President’s visit was just such an inconvenience reminding me how out of touch and clueless the Republicans really are.  Finally everyone was in the house and the President and First Lady were led in amidst a noisy standing ovation.  Repeated previous admonitions from the ushers that photos were not permitted in the theater were simply

The story is historically based and takes its name from an old W.C. Handy blues song about the real Joe Turney, (the brother of Tennessee Governor Pete Turney) who was notorious for illegally abducting African Americans and forcing them into long periods of servitude on his plantation for little or no pay.   The play unfolds at a Pittsburgh boarding house run by Seth Holly (Ernie Hudson) and his wife Bertha (Latanya Richardson Jackson) who help make ends meet by providing temporary lodging and meals for $2 per week.  Seth also fashions pots and pans and other metal products from the sheet steel brought by a traveling white peddler (Arliss Howard) who then buys Seth’s products and sells them for a profit.  The other characters include Bynum Walker (Tony Award Nominee Roger Robinson), the wise elder “root worker” who produces natural elixirs and bills himself as a “binder” based on his abilities to bind people together and Jeremy Furlow (Andre Howard) who is fired (furloughed?) from his subsistence job of $8/wk because he refuses to pay a white foreman a $0.50 kickback.