Approaching from Wylie Avenue, the sight of the structure jutting upward from a Hill District slope is the first sign that Aunt Ester has come home.

Courtesy of Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, a searing, solid production of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” has risen from the grassy hillside at 1839 Wylie Ave., a fictitious address in the script, now blooming with theatrical life.

The play that introduces aged sage Ester Tyler in the flesh is set in 1904, first chronologically in Wilson’s American Century Cycle of 10 plays, and 1839 Wylie ties Ester to her present in Pittsburgh’s Hill and to her past: Mention of the Underground Railroad first appeared in print in 1839.

Ester is a former slave, and her house is a place of sanctuary where Solly Two Kings, a former conductor on the Underground Railroad, feels free to express his views while wooing the woman of substance within its walls.

This “Gem” brings back many in the cast from Playwrights’ 2012 production, with Chrystal Bates returning as Aunt Ester. She transforms from wily trickster to regal queen of her domain to world weary, as befits a woman who has seen more of life than most people can imagine.

Bates’ Ester combines dynamism and compassion when a troubled young man named Citizen Barlow arrives at her door. He has come because he has been told she has the magical ability to wash a man’s soul.

Only God can do that, he is told, but Aunt Ester helps him seek redemption just the same.

Jonathan Berry, back as Citizen, is excellent as he emerges from a place of desperation and despair. He represents the vicious South-to-North cycle for free black men at the turn of the 20th century. In his home state of Alabama, black people are held as laborers and arrested or worse if they try to leave. In the North, they can find mill jobs — but their pay and promised room and board are manipulated to force them into what amounts to indentured servitude — or become entangled with the law.

Representing the law, which includes the mill and his own interests, is constable Caesar Wilks, played to mustache-twirling perfection by Wali Jamal. Wilks, who is disdainful of fellow black men who haven’t risen above their circumstances, revels in his own moral code of meting out justice.

He is brother to Black Mary (Candace Walker), Aunt Ester’s housemate and aide, and his menacing presence is felt even when he is absent. Eli (Les Howard) cares for the property at 1839 Wylie and is determined to build a wall out back, at one point saying it’s to keep Caesar out — or whichever wolf might appear at the back door.

Solly is played by Kevin Brown, who portrayed Eli in the 2012 production. His is a character richly drawn, revealed in stages as a man of quick wit, fierce conviction and strength. He counts among his friends the peddler Selig (Marcus Muzzopappa), a frequent and welcome visitor at Aunt Ester's, and perhaps the lone sympathetic white character in all of Wilson's works.

Where Caesar questions whether people should be free who don’t know how to take advantage of that freedom, Solly determined early on that he could not abide being free while others were enslaved.

Their inevitable clash is set in motion on the day Citizen arrives and the town is buzzing over the drowning death of a man accused of stealing a bucket of nails.

The man dies declaring his innocence as a crowd watches, and his death becomes a fuse for unrest among his fellow millworkers.

With lighting effects on an ample period-appropriate set, we are drawn into the swirling rhythms in the Hill District of 1904.

The city is an ever-present character in “Gem.” For example, the play speaks of the evicted homeless, huddled beneath the former Brady Street Bridge. And Aunt Ester sends Citizen to Blawnox by way of the Monongahela River, although Blawnox is hard by the Allegheny. Did she intend to set him on the wrong path? He never does get there, but his journey is far from over.

The title “Gem of the Ocean” most likely comes from a patriotic song about the metaphorical ship Columbia, which comes through a storm as “the ark of freedom's foundation.” Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” harks to slave ships and the hard-won freedom that, for black men and women, is a never-ending struggle, from generation to generation.

This Pittsburgh revival of “Gem” comes on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved African arriving on North American shores. That knowledge, as much as the breezy night air on opening night Saturday, was among the chills being felt on the historic Hill District site.

Another was witnessing how this company has persevered, not just over the rocky ground of the hillside but also rising above the sounds of summer in the city. “Gem of the Ocean” was a long time coming to 1839 Wylie, but it was worth the wait.

Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg. Sign up for the PG performing arts newsletter Behind the Curtain at Newsletter Preferences.

First Published: August 28, 2019, 10:30 a.m.