AugustWilson.net
Sunday, April 13, 2003
'Fences' a singular dramaCopyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
I've waited a long time for an Equity production of August Wilson's "Fences" to come to Maine. The wait is over - and it was worth it.
Portland Stage Company closes its main season series with a highly crafted, lovingly detailed production of "Fences" directed by Ron O.J. Parson. This is an evening of theater you don't want to miss.
A poet turned playwright, a high school dropout turned Pulitzer Prize winner, August Wilson is one of this generation's great playwrights. His work is traditional storytelling of the most basic yet effective kind. Wilson's poetic roots are the secret of this script. It's spare, down to the bone, and has a natural cadence that suits the human voice.
Portland State's artistic director and set designer Anita Stewart has lavished the play with an outstandingly realistic set that pulls the audience into the world of the characters - members of the black community of Pittsburgh's Hill district from 1957 to 1965. Bryon Winn's smooth lighting design helps make the transitions between scenes and moods.
Two small clapboard and shingle houses sit crammed together. One - Troy Maxson's - has a porch and a half finished fence, and in front of that, a dirt yard. Through the gingham-hung curtains one can see a detailed kitchen. It's the kind of realism audiences love.
When the lights come up, two men enter the stage recounting an event at work, and within 12 words Troy uses a racial epithet about the man he is talking about. You could almost feel the audience tense. It's a signal that this is going to be a play about the black experience with no excuses; about what it is to be black in an America that has not kept its promises to change.
Troy works as a garbage collector. Once a talented baseball player, he never
made it to the major leagues because of his color. He works each day with his
fri
end, Bono, and comes home each night to his wife Rose and son Cory. A proud
and powerful man, Troy is bitter and used up inside.
His father was a violent, unloving man. His brother Gabriel was wounded in the head in World War II, and now wanders the neighborhood with a busted trumpet, waiting for his chance to call open the gates of heaven. But Troy struggles most with his son, a talented football player who has dreams of college.
Troy is mean and holds his son back to prepare him for a tough life, like he had. But Cory wants to break from his father's limited vision, at the same time he wants to emulate him and be loved by him. This complicated father-son relationship is the most painful and compelling.
Wilson calls for the actor playing Troy Maxson to be a large man (James Earl Jones starred in the play on Broadway). His size is meant to add to a feeling of menace that underlies the power Troy has with his son and wife. We know something bad could happen if Troy lets go. Thus actor Cedric Young, not a big man, has a higher hill to climb as the larger-than-life Troy. But he imbues Troy with an anger, a stubborness, and yet a likeableness that draws us to him.
Mimi Ayers is Rose, Troy's long-suffering wife. Ayers is too restrained in the first act, but unleashes her power in a moving scene when she confronts Troy - a scene that left me with a lump in my throat.
"Fences" is a moving exploration of family dynamics, of the large sacrifices people make in their small lives, at how the sins of fathers are visited upon sons. The opening night audience rose for a standing ovation, but didn't applaud between scenes. They held the silence as if they did not want to break the spell of extraordinary theater.
Mary Snell is a theater critic who lives in Gorham.
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