{"id":2389470,"date":"2026-04-26T02:13:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T02:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2389470"},"modified":"2026-04-26T02:13:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T02:13:31","slug":"joe-turners-come-and-gone-review-cedric-the-entertainer-and-taraji-p-henson-star-in-uneven-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/joe-turners-come-and-gone-review-cedric-the-entertainer-and-taraji-p-henson-star-in-uneven-revival\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Joe Turner&#8217;s Come and Gone&#8217; review: Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson star in uneven revival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2026%2F04%2Fnewspress-collage-99zmrj557-1777140521431.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261777126212\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--review alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n\t\t<span class=\"inline-module--review__eyebrow subsection-heading-semi__label\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tTheater review\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"inline-module--review__title subsection-heading-semi\">\n\t\t\tJOE TURNER&#8217;S COME AND GONE\t\t<\/h2>\n<div class=\"rating\">\n<div class=\"rating__stars\">\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: 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rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Almost without fail, the brilliance of August Wilson emerges even in mediocre stagings of his plays.<\/p>\n<p>That is the unshakable feeling at the revival of his \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d that opened Saturday night at the Barrymore Theatre. You\u2019re never less than pleased you\u2019ve come, and yet you\u2019re constantly aware that something\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n<p>What thrives in director Debbie Allen\u2019s production of one of the writer\u2019s best works is the drama\u2019s musical conversationality and boisterous spirit. How could it not when the 1911 Pittsburgh boarding house it\u2019s set in is run by Cedric the Entertainer?<\/p>\n<p>He is smart casting for Seth, a sensible man who provides rooms at $2 a week for, broadly speaking, people in search of something: a missing wife, a job, a man. By design, the transient tenants with secrets are more intriguing than the steady proprietor. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Cedric\u2019s stand-up personality precedes him. And his funny glances, surprised entrances and one-liners give him as much presence as those with baggage and\u2026 more baggage.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--more inline-module--columnist inline-module--more--thirds\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<h2 class=\"inline-module__heading subsection-heading subsection-heading--single-line \">\n\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"subsection-heading__sub\">Johnny Oleksinski<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Nobody bears as much of an emotional burden as Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone), a frightening livewire who arrives at the establishment in the Hill neighborhood with his 11-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n<p>We first see his hatted silhouette ominously behind a\u00a0frosted\u00a0door window like a gunslinger entering\u00a0a saloon.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The revival of \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d opened on Broadway. <span class=\"credit\">Julieta Cervantes<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>That scary first impression\u00a0does not mislead. Ghoulish aside from his temper, Herald is looking for his better half Martha, who he was separated from\u00a011\u00a0years earlier. He\u2019s endured a difficult past, which Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), a wise practitioner of folk magic, can quickly sense.<\/p>\n<p>Boone\u2019s Loomis is ferocious and plagued by his life\u2019s\u00a0unimaginable\u00a0suffering.\u00a0Growling at times, he\u2019s all bark and bite. But, by no fault of the actor, the\u00a0wanderer\u00a0is where Allen\u2019s revival wobbles.<\/p>\n<p>There is an imbalance of warmth and darkness throughout the show \u2014 tilted heavily toward the former \u2014 which smothers the play\u2019s power at vital moments. All of those involve Herald.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Cedric the Entertainer plays Seth, a man who runs a boarding house. <span class=\"credit\">Julieta Cervantes<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In part, that is because this director doesn\u2019t easily express the animating contradiction of \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d:\u00a0that it\u2019s both fresh-baked-biscuits natural and boldly mystical.<\/p>\n<p>Those two sides collide at the end of Act 1 when Loomis starts alarmingly speaking in tongues and\u00a0collapses\u00a0to the ground writhing as if possessed.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s freaky. Or at least it could be. But Allen has the other characters noncommittally sway behind him, which calms the speech down by putting a cold compress on a fevered forehead. Later at the end of the play, a jolting confrontation with Herald that ends in profound spiritual release is, again, placidly staged.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Taraji P. Henson plays Bertha, Seth\u2019s wife. <span class=\"credit\">Julieta Cervantes<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>There isn\u2019t\u00a0a\u00a0discernible\u00a0point of view or artful acknowledgement of the drama\u2019s otherworldly qualities.\u00a0It\u2019s fine during comedic kitchen-table chitchat, but less assured elsewhere.\u00a0The story\u00a0is further pacified by\u00a0David Gallo\u2019s ho-hum set of hanging window frames and freestanding doors that feels built, much like the nomadic characters, to come and go.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately one of the most frequent occupants of that lackluster first floor is Taraji P. Henson as Seth\u2019s hardworking wife Bertha. Henson dials up her character\u2019s energy to a level that\u2019s frankly out of sync\u00a0with this play and the rest of the actors in it. Maybe that\u2019s to justify her strange final bow in a show that\u2019s not remotely about her.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The balance of warmth and darkness is off in the revival directed by Debbie Allen. <span class=\"credit\">Photo: Julieta Cervantes<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I have only praise for the\u00a0supporting\u00a0cast, though. Nimene Sierra Wureh\u2019s Mattie, who seems always on the verge of tears, is touchingly hopeless as she begs Bynum to use his witchcraft to bring back a man who abandoned her. And Tripp Taylor charms \u2014 or perhaps is a lecherous creep \u2014\u00a0while\u00a0his guitar-strumming Jeremy hits on all the ladies on the premises. As a religious woman with plenty of pain of her own, Abigail Onwunali is devastating in the end.<\/p>\n<p>But, when it comes to August Wilson, nobody can top Santiago-Hudson, who has a decades-long history with the late writer and an ingrained understanding of his poetry.\u00a0The words\u00a0trip off his tongue like honey. His Bynum is perfection \u2014 nutty before revealing deep sagacity; comfortingly down-home and then shaman-esque; sweet and fiery. The actor is the soul of this production, and deftly escapes its failings.<\/p>\n<p>He, like Wilson, can do no wrong.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Theater review JOE TURNER&#8217;S COME AND GONE Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street. Almost without fail, the brilliance of August Wilson emerges even in mediocre stagings of his plays. That is the unshakable feeling at the revival of his \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2389471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[354580,21741,340098,24047,345886],"class_list":["post-2389470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-cedric-the-entertainer","tag-entertainment","tag-taraji-p-henson","tag-theater","tag-theater-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Joe-Turners-Come-and-Gone-review-Cedric-the-Entertainer-and.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2389470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2389472,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2389470\/revisions\/2389472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2389471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2389470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2389470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2389470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}