Gem of the Ocean Reviews
Washington Post- Highly Recommended
"...Wilson's poetic approach to character gets especially florid with Caesar, the ironically named lawman played with a boxer's snarl and stance by KenYatta Rogers. Caesar is the melodrama's villain, yet when he enters, Wilson lets him talk and talk and talk, with the pugnacious Rogers delivering the lines like blows until you understand this man's tangled journey and tortured notion of justice. Punchlines are rare, so when Stori Ayers, as Ester's serious housekeeper-cook, Black Mary, finds a laugh with Berry's Ester, the comic relief is grand."
DC Theater Arts- Highly Recommended
"...August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, now playing at Round House Theatre, is the first in his masterwork series of ten plays, which each were framed in a successive decade in the twentieth century (among them such hits as Fences, Seven Guitars, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and Two Trains Running). Gem of the Ocean is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1904, four decades after Emancipation, in the safe home of a beloved spiritual healer named Aunt Ester, who is here given an exquisitely gritty performance by Stephanie Berry that is reason enough to rush to see this show."
DCTheatreScene- Highly Recommended
"...The outstanding cast guiding us in this passage is led by Stephanie Berry as a quietly resolute Aunt Ester. Berry eases into the character and is unassuming in her opening sections but as the dramatic tensions heighten so does her resolve. Get her riled up and watch her move with steely determination with each step in her exit across the long planks. Her melodious voice is the guiding force as she shepherds Citizen Barlow (Justin Weaks) through the legendary Middle Passage to the City of Bones."
BroadwayWorld- Highly Recommended
"...Timothy Douglas' production of Wilson's Gem of the Ocean is as rich an experience as you could possibly ask for; set at the turn of the twentieth century, it offers a lesson in the trials of Pittsburgh's African-American community at a pivotal time in the Hill district's history. More importantly, it is an examination of a violent, exploitative past from which we, as a nation, have yet to emerge."