'GUITARS' STRIKES A DEEP CHORD\August Wilson's newest drama plays the blues.

Byline: Daryl H. Miller Daily News Theater Critic

A spontaneous backyard jam session grinds to a halt as a neighbor's hammering overpowers the music.

The neighbor, it turns out, is fashioning a crude, one-string instrument so he can play along. Amused, the musicians razz him for believing his simple block of wood, nail and piece of string can equal their more conventional instruments. Their taunting stops, however, when the one-string's haunting hum triggers something deep in their souls.

This bit of action from August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" conveys not just one of the play's most important messages, but the overall thrust of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's career. Here and in such plays as "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," Wilson entices audiences to listen to music, to voices they otherwise ignore - the voices of African-Americans and, by extension, all others who aren't part of the mainstream.

It's something we all should know already, but in a city still reeling from the Rodney King beating, the '92 riots and charges of racism in the O.J. Simpson investigation, we need to hear it again.

In "Seven Guitars," appearing in a pre-Broadway engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre, Wilson writes with his usual propensity for symbols, earthy emotion and richly textured street language. Time and again, his verbal riffs evoke the blues music that is the story's milieu.

He holds the audience riveted through nearly 3-1/2 hours of backyard banter in an African-American neighborhood in 1948 Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, things break down in the play's final moments, as an underexplained, deeply symbolic event throws much of the audience into confusion.

The story unfolds in the barren yard behind a brick tenement in Pittsburgh's Hill District. As the play begins, a group of friends and neighbors gather in stunned disbelief after the funeral of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a blues singer-guitarist and dreamer whose career was just taking off with a hit record. Floyd (Keith David) reappears in a shaft of light, and the action flashes back to the events just before his killing.

Nothing - and everything - happens as Floyd's harmonica player (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), drummer (Tommy Hollis), girlfriend (Viola Davis) and girlfriend's neighbor (Michele Shay) swap stories, trade jokes, sing snippets of the blues and dance. A borderline crazy old man (Roger Robinson) who lives in the building provides an erratic counter-harmony, and the neighbor woman's attractive young niece (Rosalyn Coleman) arrives from out of town to add some sizzle.

These seven characters are, so to speak, the title's seven "guitars" - all producing distinct sounds, but combining in a glorious whole.

Under Lloyd Richards' carefully modulated direction, these lives fill the theater with their music. Roosters, goldenseal, pawn shops and the number seven recur again and again as symbolic elements, and a gritty reality makes itself known in stories about African-Americans arrested on spurious charges and sent to the workhouse. Meanwhile, Floyd, just released from the workhouse, struggles to put together enough money to get his electric guitar out of hock and buy bus tickets to transport himself and his reluctant girlfriend to Chicago for another recording session.

For the longest time, it seems Floyd - a vain, charismatic, powerfully masculine man - is destined to die either in a fight over a woman or the desperate lengths to which he'll go to get the money. The truth, however, is much more disturbing.

It's much too murky, however. Perhaps the ending is meant as a sad acknowledgment that people often destroy their own brightest hopes. But that's just a wild guess. August, you really need to help us out more on this one.

THE FACTS

The show: "Seven Guitars."

Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, with additional performances 2 p.m. Thursdays and 7 p.m. Sundays; through March 10.

Running time: Three hours, 28 minutes; one intermission.

Tickets: $15 to $50, available at Ticketmaster outlets or by calling [phone].

Our rating: Three stars

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PHOTO

Photo The textures and emotions of the blues suffuse Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson's "Seven Guitars," featuring Ruben Santiago-Hudson, left, Tommy Hollis, Viola Davis and Michele Shay.