King Hedley II

The eighth work in playwright August Wilson's ten-play cycle chronicling the history of the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century, King Hedley II is set in 1985 and tells the story of an ex-con in post-Reagan Pittsburgh trying to rebuild his life ...

Peddling stolen refrigerators in the feeble hope of making enough money to open a video store, King Hedley, a man whose self worth is built on self delusion, is scraping in the dirt of an urban backyard trying to plant seeds where nothing will grow

Getting, spending, killing and dying in a world where getting is hard and killing is commonplace are threads woven into this 1980s installment in the author's renowned cycle of plays about the black experience in America

Drawing on characters established in Seven Guitars, King Hedley II shows the shadows of the past reaching into the present as King seeks retribution for a lie perpetrated by his mother regarding the identity of his father

"Grand [with] some of the finest monologues ever written for an American stage, speeches that build gritty, often brutal details into fiery patterns of insight.... You may feel the scorch of lightning" ~ N.Y. Times

"Mesmerizing.... Full of powerful images that convey the darkly comic dialogue between hope and hopelessness in African American life" ~ NY Daily News

"Exhilarating.... Wilson has endowed his struggling souls with a metaphysical grandeur and a titanic vigor of language that is like no other dramatist's. He takes the idea of tragedy and the common man to Olympian heights ... [and] boldly tackles the big philosophical questions most contemporary playwrights shrink from. He articulates these questions with grounding, often witty detail and in an inner city vernacular that soars into both unabashed lyricism and earthy anecdote.... There is no denying the transporting, natural music of Hedley and phrases from it haunt the memory" ~ N.Y. Times