In a Humanities and Cultural Studies class I took freshman year, I wrote a fairly decent paper in response to a famous critic, arguing that the music video is one of the highest forms of art because it combines every other kind of art––narrative, dance, visual imagery, music, and advertising. I might have actually deserved the B+ I got on that paper if I went back and rewrote it, replacing the phrase "music video" with "Penumbra Theater's production of August Wilson's Two Trains Running."

The cast and crew of Penumbra, a theater company that delves into cultural and artistic experiences from an African-American perspective, tap into these other disciplines of art, relying on movement, musical sensibility, story-telling and flawless moments that fill the stage.

The play is set in Pittsburgh in 1969, and chronicles the lives of the group of regulars at Memphis Lee's eatery. The restaurant is in its last days; the city hopes to buy the building and raze it in the name of "urban renewal." Tension fills each scene, and an outburst of emotion rests right below each surface of each character: Memphis (James A. Williams), the restaurant's owner rails at racism and the white establishment, which is trying to give him less than his building is worth; an ex-con,, Sterling (Kevin D. West) hopes to better his social standing by finding a job, but instead depends more and more on hitting the lottery or using a gun; Wolf (Ahanti Young) is a slick and flashy numbers-runner who attempts to bridge the gap between the two generations; Risa (Marie-Francoise Theodore), Memphis' only employee, has muted her sexuality through violent self-mutilation, and brings an almost tangible caution and exhaustion to the stage. Like in music, these characters express themselves through pattern, solos, changing tempos, harmony and occasional dissonance.

The actors are clearly familiar with their characters and with the script, and they foster an intimacy with the audience, themselves, and each other, while never upstaging the power of the August Wilson's language. Wilson, arguably one of the most talented playwrights of the twentieth century, furnishes his dialogue with powerful, consciously rhythmic diction, and the cast and crew at the Penumbra have interpreted it boldly. The masterful acting and staging result in outstanding individual scenes that linger like a painting.

Hambone, who once painted a white man's fence on the promise of a ham, but only received a chicken, stomps and reels on the stage, screaming "I want my hambone!" as he has done everyday for the past nine-and-a-half years. Sterling tries to break the pattern by teaching him other phrases like "Black is beautiful." As Hambone deciphers the meaning of each of these words, he slowly lifts a finger and points to his guardian and number-one ally, Risa. It's a lovely scene of emergence and illumination.

The play swarms with such moments, and the outstanding cast performs them subtly and expertly. Even when retired house-painter-turned-philosopher Halloway (Adolphus Ward) is given a speech about the history of whites and blacks that reads like a prearranged doctrine, it is delivered with a mixture of scorn and awe that gives it great consequence.

Yet in the same way most music videos don't make sense, Two Trains Running falters in its narrative. The script is not Wilson's strongest work; small subplots are not resolved, and the conclusion really comes out of nowhere, countering the richness of earlier characterizations. But the words are so lovely, and they are spoken so magnificently by the Penumbra Company, that it is easy to be taken in by the work as a whole.