The First Couple spent Saturday evening in New York for dinner and a play, making good on the president's promise during the campaign to take Michelle to a Broadway show once it was all over.

They chose August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, a play I had the pleasure of seeing myself just two weeks ago. Obviously there were no presidential sightings that night, but Forest Whitaker was two rows behind me. That was exciting enough.

Joe Turner, which is playing at the Belasco Theater on 44th Street, is set in a boarding house in Pittsburgh in 1911, when it was possible for Northern blacks to have achieved some degree of personal success, but slavery was not so far behind either. As borders enter into the house, run by a smart, self-made man and his wife, their disenfranchisement becomes the backdrop of a story that is, ultimately, about one man's desperate search for his wife, who abandoned him when he was forced into slavery for seven years.

The cast carries the burdens, the anger, and resiliency of the human spirit with tightly wound energy that occasionally explodes on the stage, channeling and transmitting an entire history to the audience.

I do not see a lot of Broadway plays -- in fact, this was only the second one I've been to after 10 years in New York. But I went to this one at the behest of my girlfriend and her mother, and I'm glad that I did. Joe Turner tackles slavery, race, community, family, ambition, childhood, parenthood, sex and, really, much more -- all without ever seeming contrived or heavy-handed. The themes are woven together in such a way that an ensemble cast like the one currently performing Wilson's play can develop them all simultaneously, presenting something that feels like real life, condensed to just over two hours in length but organic enough to be utterly convincing.

I can understand why the Obamas wanted to see Wilson's play: not only because of its significance for African Americans, but because it's simply great theater.

[Image: Playbill.com]