Ben Judah’s job in American Stage’s Two Trains Running was to suggest through clothing an African-American community of the late 1960s, one which had risen above the communal poverty of the past to the beginnings, however embattled, of prosperity. The costumes he placed on his actors therefore had to suggest a spectrum, a range that made sense for businessman Memphis, brain-damaged Hambone, just-out-of-prison Sterling, and comfortable undertaker West. Thanks to his remarkable choices, the spectacle of Two Trains was a metaphor for a whole era, and the clothing of the large cast seemed to radiate a history of struggle and incipient accomplishment. August Wilson would have beamed.
