April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Set in the sweltering black ghetto of Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1911, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” gives us the mesmerizing figure of Bynum Walker, conjure man. Played by the prodigiously gifted Roger Robinson, Bynum is the fulcrum of a play abundant with characters in search of lost wives, forgotten ambitions and dashed goals.

“Joe Turner” is the second installment in the late August Wilson’s imposing, decade-by-decade cycle of plays about life in the district from the beginning of the last century to its end.

His epochal achievement is, in toto, a faithfully imagined panorama of the bustling evolution of black life in the U.S. in all its diversity, as well as of the changing relations between blacks and whites. It is a true dramatic decathlon.

Some of the plays are better than others, successful roughly in inverse proportion to the amount of metaphysics, mysticism and the supernatural they contain. In this respect, “Joe Turner” is one of the chief offenders, weltering in several kinds of high-flown overreaching.

Seth and Bertha Holly, a middle-aged couple, run a boarding house. The boarders comprise, first of all, Bynum, a “rootworker” who uses vegetable roots and pigeon blood to ply his magic as a “binder,” helping congenial individuals to make lasting connections. This requires finding their personal “song,” which they must discover within themselves.

Boisterous Picker

Other residents include boisterous young Jeremy Furlow, a laborer hoping to make good as a guitar player and looking for the right woman to travel the world with. Around, too, is Mattie Campbell, still hoping to be rejoined by the absconded father of her two deceased babies, falling for sweet-talking Jeremy while she waits.

He, however, dumps her for another resident, Molly Cunningham, a sexy adventuress, whose contempt for men does not prevent her serially hooking up with them.

The most arresting newcomers are Herald Loomis, an ex- deacon, and his teenage daughter Zonia, searching for the wife and mother who left them a decade ago. For seven of those years, Herald was impressed into the service of the (unseen) Joe Turner, a legendary white boss, about whom his toilers made up a work song beginning, “Joe Turner’s come and gone.”

Almost everyone here is searching or waiting, including the cheerfully fantastical Bynum. The play is all about finding and binding, whether a missing person or a missing song.

So far, so good.

Bad Trips

But there are also phantasmagoric visions of bones walking on water, debilitating possession by that ghostly vision, talking in tongues and mystical self-mutilation and a bit too much of that elusive, in-dwelling song.

Michael Yeargan’s sparse scenery, with pieces flying in and out, efficiently does what is necessary, as do Catherine Zuber’s costumes and Brian MacDevitt’s lighting. Bartlett Sher’s staging adds some unscripted but welcome touches, often visually stunning.

Robinson makes the far-fetched Bynum irresistibly real, in a performance for the ages. Not far behind is Coleman’s sinister Loomis.

High praise, too, is due Ernie Hudson’s mercurial Seth and Latanya Richardson Jackson’s heartwarming Bertha, as well as the seven winning others.

It is not their fault if some of the spottily seen characters are, like the unseen Joe Turner, a bit too fleeting in their coming and going.

At the Belasco Theatre, 111 W. 44th St. Information: +1- 212-239-6200; http://www.telecharge.com. Rating: ***

What the Stars Mean:
****       Excellent
***        Good
**         Average
*          Poor
(No stars) Worthless

(John Simon is the New York drama critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: John Simon in New York at jis1925@aol.com.

Last Updated: April 16, 2009 22:30 EDT