The setting for August Wilson’s play Two Trains Running is Pittsburgh in 1969. Martin Luther King is dead, but the civil rights movement and Black Power are alive. The play takes place entirely in a café on the Hill in the city, where an ‘urban redevelopment’ project is driving many black Americans out of their homes, businesses and jobs. A fine theatre set underlines this with a giant wrecking ball and ruined walls above the brightly lit café.

The play appears to be a ‘slice of life’ drama cut, featuring 7 disparate characters drawn together by the café, all finely played by the cast. Memphis (Andrew French) is the café owner, driven off his land in his youth and now acutely aware of the risks that his property will be compulsorily purchased. He is determined to hold out for what he thinks is a fair price. West, the undertaker (subtly played by Geoff Aymer), is the one character who is financially secure. He offers Memphis a deal for his café, but is constantly rebuffed.

Then there is Wolf (Ray Emmet Brown), who hustles a living by collecting money for betting; Sterling (Michael Salami) is an excitable ex-con desperate to support the rally; and Hambone (Derek Ezenagu) is an almost incoherent, moneyless, traumatised guy, known as Hambone because he constantly demands ham, not chicken. The oldest character is Holloway (Leon Herbert), who hands out advice and his knowledge of the world. He also talks up the mysterious Aunt Ester. She is a Sibyl-like prophetic woman, who is allegedly 322 years old, lives behind a red door and hands out gnomic utterances to anyone who consults her. The only female character is Risa (sparkily played by Anita-Joy Uwajeh). She is the cook and waitress, with her own secrets and determined to resist the blandishments of the men.

As the drama unfolds, so the themes of self-determination unfold. The mysterious Aunt Ester tells Memphis to 'go back and pick up the ball'. Sterling presses for the others to join the protest rally, buys a gun and flirts with Risa, whom he has a crush on.

Two Trains Running is one of ten plays which August Wilson wrote in his American Century Cycle, each focusing on a particular decade. As a whole, they shed an important light on the African American experience in the twentieth century. Two Trains Running is optimistic, and the character of Sterling embodies (according to Wilson’s widow Constanza Romero) ‘August’s impetuous spirit and insistent search for how to make a difference in a world that does not offer many options to a young black man’.