I have to admit it. I am not acclimated to Juneteenth. I imagine I will get there, but I view it as a Black holiday (and more power to them), and I don’t feel comfortable taking it from them. I also admit to not fully understanding it. And I don’t like the word, because it isn’t a word. And, as they celebrate related, but different things, I don’t want Juneteenth to take away from the civil rights victories celebrated on Martin Luther King Day.

(My first aside of the day. If you are 80 and want to feel young, just go to the Round House Theater for a Sunday matinee.)

Yesterday, we went to Round House, and saw a production of August Wilson’s last play, Radio Golf. I think Wilson is one of the greatest American playwrights (but what do I know?). No question about it. And I think that Radio Golf has within it several sparks of greatness. But I don’t think it fully succeeds.

As i said, this was his final play. He died at age 60 of a virulent liver cancer that had been diagnosed only a few months earlier. The play had its first performance at Yale after (I think) his diagnosis, but before his death. It’s the only time he could see it on stage.

I have read that Wilson was an active writer, never satisfied until he was, editing and rewriting as he watched early performances. Here, he did not get that chance.

I did not know this when we watched the play. And I was surprised when one of my first thoughts leaving the theater was that “this play needs some editing.”

Radio Golf is the final play of Wilson’s brilliant Pittsburgh Cycle. Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th century. Each is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and many of the characters, play to play, are the same or are related to prior characters. They tell the story of interrelated families, of a neighborhood, of a city, of the United States. They mix reality with fantasy. They tell the story of the Black man trying to find his place in what he perceives as a White man’s world. We have seen most of these plays. They are universally brilliant.

Very briefly, Radio Golf, set in 1997, is about Harmon Wilks, a Black real estate entrepreneur, the son of a Black real estate entrepreneur, who is leading a massive redevelopment of the Hill and at the same time running to be the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh. His partner, Roosevelt Hicks, is a Black man, and old school friend, who is out to make as much money as he can. The mayoral candidate already has money. His aim is to make the Hill and Pittsburgh better.

A ground breaking on the first major project is nearing. But an old Black man (“They call me Old Joe”) objects to the developers tearing down his family house. The two men make fun of him, until Wilks discovers that Old Joe was not given the required notice before he, Wilks, bought the house from the city at a tax sale.

No one else knows this secret. What to do? You can imagine that Hicks and Wilks have very different ideas. Their views diverge even more when Wilks realizes that he and Old Joe were distant cousins and that this house had, in a way, been his family house, too.

A terrific plot, I am sure you will agree. And it brings up so many questions. Marginality. Gentrification. Black politicians trying to do good. White businessmen using Black faces to get city contracts. The “successful” Black man with little or no concern for Blacks mired in poverty.

I thought the first act showed Wilson’s usual brilliance. But he lost it in the second act, where the play ended with Hicks being backed by a White businessman with connections buying out Wilks and getting city approval to tear down the house. I believe that Wilson, had he the opportunity, would have made major changes to the second act.

There are only five actors in the cast of Radio Golf. Because I am trying hard not to be overly critical in this blog, I will only say this. Four of the actors were terrific.

Should you see it before it closes? Of course. And tell me what you think.