KING HEDLEY II by August Wilson, playing at True Colors Theatre

It’s 1985 in the backyard of an urban Pittsburg neighborhood staunch with decay. King Hedley II is an ex-con desperately trying to make a new life for himself selling stolen refrigerators. Scraping at the dirt, King spends a lot of time trying to plant seeds where nothing can grow.  This becomes the perfect metaphor for his life as his dreams are doomed to a violent end. In Wilson’s darkest and most symbolic play, King Hedley II is the eighth play in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, a haunting and challenging tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.