Almost two years after its success with August Wilson's "Two Trains Running" (and three months after the playwright's death), The Actors' Group is staging "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," the second in Wilson's 10-play cycle tracing 20th-century African-American history.

While "Two Trains" was a hopeful character comedy set in a rundown soul-food diner in a 1969 Pittsburgh ghetto, "Joe Turner" is a darker piece about the transition of poor blacks from the rural south to the industrial north. Many of its characters are on a twisting path and are variously haunted by ghosts and visions from their African roots.

The script initially plays like a collection of character vignettes searching for a plot, and suffers from an overlong first act that makes for an uncomfortable sit in TAG's cramped Yellow Brick Studio. But the seemingly disparate refrains meld together in the second act, creating a message of searching and cleansing that fits the title's blues metaphor.

The pivotal character is Herald Loomis, played with dark brooding by Derrick Brown. With his shy young daughter at his side, Loomis is searching for his wife. The couple had separated 10 years earlier when Loomis was illegally swept up by bounty hunter Joe Turner. After seven years of servitude and three more of wandering, Loomis arrives at a boarding house in the rough Hill District of Pittsburgh, asking for a room. It is 1911, and the going is tough.

The intensity of Brown's performance is the production's most unsettling element — and its greatest strength. In a wild act-one curtain scene, as the other boarders are caught up in a "juba," spontaneously singing and dancing to African rhythms, Loomis falls down in a trance, seeing visions of bones walking across the water and unable to rise to his feet.

Similarly, it is Loomis who brings the play to its concluding message by brutally cleansing away his demons with his own blood.

The play's balancing force is Bynum Walker, a character Curtis Duncan builds from initial eccentricity to tangible spirituality. The man is a "binder," searching for the right song that will affix a man to his salvation, but children suspect him of performing voodoo rites with backyard pigeons.

While the seesawing between Loomis and Walker is strongly portrayed by two fine actors and gives the play its ritualistic element, the boarding house onlookers are also etched by good ensemble performances.

Seth Holly (Jim Andrews) is the proprietor, conservatively collecting rent in advance and assuring that there is no trouble. His wife, Bertha (Deneen Thompson), dispenses love, laughter and homemade biscuits.

Fresh from the country is day laborer Jeremy Furlow (Savada Gilmore), who has love light in his eyes and dreams of making money by playing his guitar.

Mattie Campbell (Jeanne Herring) is a young woman who has lost two babies and her man but still dreams of motherhood, and Molly Cunningham (Deborah Young) refuses rough work and insists on occasional male company.

Orchestrating the excellent performances is director Russell Motter, who brings much of Wilson's first-act wandering to a powerful conclusion.