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Stage Review of Matrix Theatre’s Two Trains Running 
Matrix Theatre; Los Angeles, California 

March 1-3, 2019 

Directed by Michelle Shay 

By David Román 
Professor of English, American Studies, and Ethnicity, University of Southern California 

              

In Shay’s Two Trains Running, each of the actors brought to life their 
character’s multi-layered psychological intensity.  

 David Román 

Abstract  

A review of Two Trains Running by August Wilson, staged at Matrix Theatre in Los 
Angeles, California from March 1 through March 3, 2019.  
 

Keywords 
Two Trains Running, August Wilson, plays, Sophina Brown, American Century Cycle 

The actor and producer Sophina Brown plans to stage all ten plays of August Wilson’s 
American Century Cycle in Los Angeles. Two Trains Running is her second production in 
this process, and it follows a critically and commercially successful run of King Hedley II at 
the Matrix Theatre in 2018.   Brown intends to build a core audience 
that will be drawn to experience The Cycle in its entirety, all the while 
allowing audiences to experience each production individually and 
on its own terms.  Brown has chosen not to stage the plays in 
succession either by the decade they represent or the order in which 
they were written.   

Despite the recent revivals of Wilson’s work at the Mark Taper 
Forum  (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone) and 
the Pasadena Playhouse (Fences, Jitney), two of the premiere venues 
in the Los Angeles area, and the Fall 2019 Taper production of Ruben 
Santiago-Hudson’s celebrated 2017 Broadway revival of Jitney and A Noise Within Theatre’s 
Fall 2019 production of Gem of the Ocean, Brown sees a need to produce Wilson’s American 
Century Cycle and feels that Los Angeles would appreciate her efforts. So far, she has been 
right. Both King Hedley II and Two Trains Running were hits, extending their initial limited 
runs and generating rave reviews from Los Angeles critics.  The commitment to stage the 
cycle stems from Brown and not the theatre itself, which often partners with other artists to 

David Roman 



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present their work.   It is Sophia Brown who will guide the cycle’s completion in Los Angeles 
over the next several years.  

One of the major differences between Brown’s productions and those in mainstream 
venues is scale.  The Matrix is a 99-seat theatre located in the center of Hollywood. It has a 
40-foot wide thrust stage that promotes an intimacy that is secured by the audience seating, 
which is only four aisles deep. Another major difference is access: tickets are reasonably 
priced and discounts for students, seniors, and groups are generous.  Brown also does 
extensive community outreach to insure diverse audiences.  All of this is to say that her 
audiences might not be the same audiences at the larger regional theatres producing 
Wilson’s work concurrently.  And while there is, of course, some overlap, there is enough 
interest in Wilson’s work to allow for LA’s theatres to develop unique audiences tailored to 
their mission and Wilson’s place within it.  That said, the Matrix production of Two Trains 
Running shared with these and other productions of Wilson’s work over the years, and 
especially in the revivals since his death in 2005, a basic drive to honor Wilson’s legacy by 
offering stagings steeped in naturalistic sets and costumes, and real, complex 
characterization.  Everything is meant to service the historical plausibility of Wilson’s 
dramaturgy. 

Michelle Shay, a Wilson actor who received a Tony nomination for her performance in 
Seven Guitars, directed this production.  (Shay also directed the 2018 Matrix production of 
King Hedley II.)   Shay joins other prominent Wilson actors such as Ruben Santiago-Hudson 
and Phylicia Rashad who were also original cast members of Wilson’s Broadway premieres to 
make the transition to directing his work. They are the immediate heirs to the playwright’s 
canon, and their previous affiliations with his work credentialize them as directors of his 
plays.   These directors (and some of their prominent colleagues such as Kenny Leon and 
Marion McClinton) follow the naturalistic impulses of Lloyd Richards, who set the standard 
for a Wilson production by casting strong actors working together as an ensemble to tell the 
specific story of the play.  These “second-generation” Wilson directors---or post-Wilson 
directors---refuse any deliberate interpretation other than to serve as surrogates for Wilson’s 
vision. The results are fully respectful and artistically sophisticated productions.   

In Shay’s Two Trains Running, each of the actors brought to life their character’s multi-
layered psychological intensity.  The production was designed to return us to Memphis Lee’s 
Hill District Pittsburgh diner in 1969.  While Memphis (Montae Russell) and Risa (Nija 
Okoro) remained the center of the play, the diner’s regular customers never felt extraneous. 
Holloway, beautifully performed by Adolph Ward, rarely moved from his seat, as if his 
calming presence was a non-negotiable certainty in this period of social upheaval and 
change.  Despite the actor’s thinness and frailty, Holloway was monumental in his stature.  
While the other men busily moved in and out of Memphis’s diner, Holloway and Risa did so 
less freely.  He chose to sit; she was more constrained and tentative in her comings and 
goings.  Risa’s main movement was to and from the diner’s kitchen, which was behind a 
counter that took up much of the stage. While the men moved readily in and out of the 
space, suggesting the emerging opportunities available to them in the late 1960s despite the 
rampant systemic racism of the period, Risa literally could only step back.  The only time she 
moved forward and closest to the audience—center stage, in fact—was to reveal the self-
inflicted scars on her legs.  In this one simple scene, Shay and Okoro stage Risa’s entire 
character.  Yes, she has a story, but it is hers and hers alone to tell even if the men already 
know if it.    

John Iacovelli, a frequent Wilson scenic designer, created the meticulously historically 
accurate set.   The set was composed of a period cigarette machine and jukebox, Art Deco-
inspired hanging light fixtures, a glass block placed over the diner’s windows, red stools and 
diner tables, and most remarkably, a stunning wall of framed black and white photographs 
of historical Black figures who gained notoriety beginning in the 1950s, figures relevant and 
contemporary to the characters on stage.  These images of Muhammad Ali, Nat King Cole, 



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Ella Fitzgerald, and Martin Luther King among others—as well as those of local Pittsburgh 
personalities—conveyed the values of the community.   The diner became the repository of 
this shared history, deepening Memphis’ s claim of the property’s value.  These photographs 
provided Memphis and the others a visual archive of respectability and the evidence of its 
achievement.  Rather than place the characters in contrast to these figures, Shay and 
Iacovelli embedded the actors portraying them in this iconic roster of pride. The actors 
performed the play sandwiched on the small Matrix stage between this wall of notable 
figures and the audience in the theatre. Whether it was through Black icons of sports, 
politics, and the arts of the 1950s overseeing the play’s characters in 1969, or through the 
production itself promoting August Wilson as a figure deserving his own place on this 
portrait gallery of African American cultural heritage, the past was ever present as a marker 
of black resilience.   

This reverence for the legacy of August Wilson—and that of Lloyd Richards, too—has 
resulted in beautifully nuanced productions of the ten-play cycle, including Sophina 
Brown’s first-rate Matrix productions.  And yet the political and artistic choice to stage 
naturalist interpretations of Wilson’s work, while securing the playwright’s canonical status, 
limits our idea of an August Wilson play.  In staging realist authenticity, the productions run 
the risk of eventually appearing as costume dramas, conventional perhaps even predictable 
theatrical experiences.    

Perhaps it is time to open up Wilson’s spectacular achievement to a new generation of 
Black directors who excel in radical deconstruction and innovative theatricality.  I am 
thinking of such accomplished directors as Robert O’Hara, Niegel Smith, Patricia McGregor, 
Kamilah Forbes, and Kwama Kwei-Armah, among many others, who are known for creating 
theatrical and innovative productions of new contemporary Black plays as well as American 
classics.  I am not suggesting that we replace the traditional with something radically 
contrasting.   Instead, why not indeed have two trains running----the local and the express, 
the conventional and the experimental—and invite twenty-first century artists and 
audiences along for the ride.   

Work Cited 

Wilson, August. Two Trains Running. The August Wilson Century Cycle.  Theatre 
Communications Group. 2007. 

Author Bio 

David Roman is a professor of English and American studies at the University of Southern 
California. His research focuses on theatre and performance studies, American studies, 
Latina/o studies, and queer studies.  

 



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Adolphus Ward as Holloway

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Adolphus Ward as Holloway 

Nija Okoro as Sterling and Risa 

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Tiffany Judkins 

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