Wilson world
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre stages a top-notch production of August Wilson's King Hedley II.

By Robert Avila

IN FAIRY TALES the little lion cub – Disney's Lion King is on my mind – only needs to remember his royal patrimony to claim his proper domain and set the world aright. But if you're a second-generation king in Pittsburgh's Hill District, circa 1985, it's Sophocles who has your number, not Disney. August Wilson's King Hedley II (L. Peter Callender) thinks he knows who his father is, but like a figure out of Greek tragedy, his fate is circumscribed by higher powers, whether gods or governments.

In a solid and meticulous northern California premiere, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre presents the eighth installment of Wilson's magisterial 10-play cycle, his decade-by-decade exploration of the African American experience in the 20th century. The action unfolds (via Jedd Delucia's richly detailed scenic design) in a small yard between two decrepit apartments, propped up by I-beams, in which the eroded foundation of a former domicile still throws up uselessly a windowpane, a piece of wall, and the outline of a room. At the back hovers a claustrophobic wedge of the inner city, a maze with nowhere to run – despite encouragement, that is, from run-maker Hank Aaron, whose face on the side of a building tosses a real-life hero in with an ad executive's conceit.

Here Callender's choleric, brooding Hedley, reluctant son of Ruby (an irresistible Rhodessa Jones), stalks the stage with an unpredictable energy – the pent-up ambitions of a quintessential American Dreamer frustrated by the American system, that invisible web of economic and political forces beyond our ken. His attempt to get something to grow in the dusty yard (flowers for his companion, Tonya, played by Tonia Jackson) forms one of the play's consummate gestures. It's precious little ground – at once hallowed, poisoned, bloodied, and bled dry – in which to make a life that looks anything like the ideals of childhood for these characters. Tonya already knows how such ideals grow up deformed here (and says so at one point with a moving eloquence). But Hedley won't be deterred. He fiercely guards his new shoots and, with his laid-back sidekick, Mister (Michael J. Asberry), sells stolen refrigerators toward a down payment on a legitimate business of his own. Meanwhile, Stool Pigeon (Charles Branklyn), the play's unlikely prophet, warns of a fall in biblical invocations.

Stanley E. Williams directs an excellent six-member cast, whose complex and human portraits carry us easily through two hefty acts. The arc to King Hedley II seems shallower than other plays in the cycle, however, and the richly drawn-out path to the play's climax can accordingly leave audiences feeling a little deflated by its arrival. Nevertheless, Wilson's ideas are endowed with a theatrical sophistication that's hard to match.

Interestingly, Wilson's prophetic mode (which crops up elsewhere in the cycle as well) here answers the top-down fundamentalism of the Reagan era, when economic banditry and social parsimony were coated with a veneer of biblical righteousness. A short aural collage at the beginning of each act (mixing sound bites from the Reagan administration, TV themes, and pop songs) reminds us that Ronald Regan also used a "war on terror" to justify terrorizing people at home and abroad, though at home they just as often called it "Reagan economics." The Gap Band may have had something else in mind when they sang it, but hearing "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" alongside Reagan's demagoguery sure makes it feel like something was in the air. That time looks like a prelude to today's untethered power, of course, grown so arrogant it makes conspiracies like Iran-Contra and "trickle-down economics" seem bashful.

Since then, there's been no extricating the millennialism from the realism. Wilson's sober dissection of 20th-century history holds some heavy prophecies for the 21st.

Lion around town

Apparently director and designer Julie Taymor didn't win those Tonys for nothing. The Bay Area premiere of her staged interpretation of Disney's The Lion King, courtesy of Best of Broadway, works so well you're liable to forgive the residual Disney that clings to this singular spectacle. The costumes alone, especially the remarkable masks and puppets (designed with Michael Curry), are artful, elegant inventions. With them, actors deftly mimic the grace and bearing of a giraffe or a gazelle or a trick mouse. Not surprisingly, amid the more than 200 puppets onstage, the least visually interesting characters turn out to be the two most closely resembling their screen counterparts (or rather, the life-size versions you'd expect to see wandering around the park in Anaheim, mitted hands frantically waving hello).

The plot – a lion cub grows up in exile until he can assume his rightful place on the usurped throne of his late father – must be familiar to nearly everyone by now, and it will seem familiar either way. The characters are the stock ones recycled by Disney, sometimes unthinkingly so (like the admittedly funny hyenas whose roots extend to old minstrel forms). They're animated, however, by a superb cast. Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi's book sails along smoothly on a regular supply of laughs, Garth Fagan's choreography radiates beauty and boundless energy, and the popular score by Elton John and Tim Rice is not half bad either, especially supplemented by the work of African composer Lebo M and others.

In short, Taymor's reimagining of The Lion King amounts to a multicourse banquet so deliciously extravagant you even find yourself enjoying the story (the more traditional fare at the center of the table). It's just easier to resist Disney's efforts to make it a small world after all amid such exquisite showmanship.

'King Hedley II' runs through March 14. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m., Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 620 Sutter, S.F. $25-$32. (415) 474-8800, www.ticketweb.com. 'Disney's The Lion King' runs through Sept. 5. Tues.-Sat., 8 p.m. (also Sat. and June 23, 25, 28, and 30, 2 p.m.); Sun., 3 p.m. (starting March 21, Sun. show schedule changes to 1 and 6:30 p.m.; no shows June 27 and July 4), Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market, S.F. $26-$82. (415) 512-7770 or (415) 356-LION, www.bestofbroadway-sf.com.