Within minutes, playgoers bemused by the banter in this de facto wayside shelter find themselves plummeted into a dramatic realm taking them on a literal deep dive into Stygian myth, as our troubled pilgrim is transported on a hallucinatory journey to the hallowed City of Bones beneath the Atlantic Ocean's Middle Passage, where dwell the abandoned dead of the slave ships. Yes, you read that correctly-an exorcism, replete with charms, amulets and prayers to ancient deities. Visitors to the residence belonging to the pastoral "Aunt" Ester Tyler, however, are advised at the door that "this is a peaceful house" so that when a distraught young man weighed down by a guilty conscience arrives seeking absolution, its mistress immediately sets about preparations for an exorcism. The theater playbill for Gem of the Ocean informs us that our setting is the industrial outskirts of Pittsburgh in 1904, where street talk hints at labor tensions in the nearby steel mills, recently rendered volatile by the suicide of a factory worker accused of stealing a bucket of nails.
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