SEVEN GUITARS at TAG Adds 2 More Shows!

This is not a review! Look for my reveiwerly insights in the 2/22 issue of Honolulu Weekly.

But I did want to get the word out that TAG's sold-out production of August Wilson's play Seven Guitars has added two more shows: Friday 3/2 and Saturday 3/3. Call (808) 722-6941 for reservations.

What I will say is that this is a beautifully written play—I had never read it before going to the show last Friday and it was such a pleasure to see and hear this story happen for the first time. For instance, there’s a great scene where the “bluesmen" engage in a series of clever back-and-forth rhyming, full of contradictory verses like, “One bright morning in the middle of the night / Two dead boys got up to fight / Back to back they faced each other / Drew their swords and shot each other / A deaf policeman heard the noise / And he came and killed those two dead boys.”

The play is engaging from beginning to end, despite the moment in the second act when it dawned on me that I had locked my keys in the car in my haste to make it to the theatre on time. (I arrived with not a moment to spare—the pre-show announcements had already started.) Luckily I didn't realize until I got to my car that I had actually left the engine running. That might have ruined the end of the show for me. Not to worry, though, all turned out fine and I got home safe and sound.

Also of note (and back to the point of this post) is the fact that this is Frankie Enos's directorial debut. Enos, with Leonard Piggee in 2003, co-launched “what would become TAG's annual tribute to black playwrights" (from Enos's Bio).

This production will take you to a place and time in the past that many have never experienced, and it's definitely a world worth visiting.

For more information, visit the TAG website. Photo courtesy of The Actors' Group.

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