Production History: Fences
Basic Facts
Play Makers Repertory Company
Paul Green Theatre
Chapel Hill, NC
10/27/10 – 11/14/10
Stage Director: Seret Scott
Costume Designer: Helen Q. Huang
Lighting Designer: Peter West
Review Capsule #1
“Troy is a daunting role, challenging its interpreters with the character's shaggy dog stories, pent up rages and domineering personality. TV and film actor Charlie Robinson fulfills all these requirements, bringing great humanity to Troy's virtues and flaws, a truly stellar performance.” |
Review Capsule #2
“The language of the characters, the family dynamics and the family portrait that is drawn is so rich and full of life.” |
Julie Cooper, The Daily Tar Heel, 10/28/10
Basic Facts
American Stage
Raymond James Theatre
St. PetersBurg, FL
09/23/09 – 10/11/09
Stage Director: Timothy Douglas
Lighting Designer: Joe Oshry
Costume Dessigner: Ben Judah
Review Capsule #1
Evander Duck Jr. gives a riveting performance as Troy, swinging from the garrulous charm of a natural-born storyteller to the resentful rage of a black slugger born "too early" to benefit from the desegregation of Major League Baseball to a fierce kind of shaman doing a soliloquy to "Mr. Death." Troy is an enormous, complex role, and the bearded, barrel-chested Duck inhabits it completely. |
John Fleming Times Performing Arts Critic September 29, 2009 Review Capsule #2 American Stage Theatre Company has hit another home run with "Fences," the company's third production from August Wilson's 10-play Century Cycle. Each play chronicles a decade of the African American experience, nine of which are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District. "Fences," Wilson's sixth installment, takes place from 1957 to 1965 and examines the struggles of the Maxson family. |
KATHY L. GREENBERG Tribune correspondent |
Published: September 29, 2009 |
Basic Facts
Cygnet Theatre Company
Cygnet Theatre
San Diego, CA
01/26/08 – 02/24/08
Stage Director: Delcia Turner Sonnenberg
Lighting Designer: Eric Lotze
Sound Designer: George Ye
Review Capsule #1
A visit to Cygnet Theatre to see August Wilson’s Fences allows the audience an extended visit with the Maxon’s, long enough to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s an opportunity to sit on their front porch and listen in on private moments that speak to a family in love and then a family who has fallen out of love and into crisis mode. Wilson sculpted his “Hill District” characters so skillfully that they easily breathe with the reality of life; they are richly vivid and naturally flawed.http://www.sdtheatrescene.com/w-agora/view.php?bn=sdtheaterinfoforums_reviews&key=1201620073
Review Capsule #2
Angela Carone
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2008/feb/01/august-wilsons-fences-at-cygnet-theater/
Basic Facts
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Hazlett Theatre
Pittsburgh PA
04/08/99 – 05/16/99
Stage Director: Marion Isaac McClinton
Set Designer: David Gallo
Lighting Designer: Tom Sturge
Review Capsule #1
The play, about a fierce garbage hauler whose earlier dreams in the Negro baseball league were thwarted, was a hit at the Pennsylvania nonprofit in 1989, with Redwood. The actor subsequently played the role in seven different productions.Kenneth Jones and David Lefkowitz
Playbill.com
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/44873-Redwood-Stars-in-Pittsburgh-Public-Fences-Going-Up-April-16-May-16
Review Capsule #2
Directing the revival of "Fences" that opens for previews Thursday, is Marion McClinton, previously director of Wilson's "Jitney" and "Seven Guitars" at the Public, but also author of the searing "Police Boys" that played at the Public in 1995. Tackling the lead role of Troy in "Fences," as he did at the Public in 1989, is John Henry Redwood, known also to Public audiences as the author of "A Sunbeam" (1991) and "The Old Settler" (1998). And playing Troy's older son, Lyons, is Glover, new to Pittsburgh, with impressive playwriting credits.
Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic
Basic Facts
Cort Theatre
New York, NY
April 26, 2010 - July 11, 2010
Produced by: Carole Shorenstein Hays and Scott Rudin
Director: Kenny Leon
Lighting designer: Brian MacDevitt
Set designer: Santo Loquasto
Set designer: Santo Loquasto
Review Capsule #1
Set in 1957 in the backyard of the Maxsons' modest house, the play depicts the first playful but increasingly charged confrontations between Troy and his family, with a major plot point involving the building of a fence that has all too symbolic meaning.
Review Capsule #2
Under Kenny Leon's fast and forward-leaning direction, Washington has some difficulty modulating his theatrical intensity early on. And the residue of his Hollywood glamour works against his character. Troy, an ex-Negro League baseball player struggling to live up to his family responsibilities as a sanitation man in 1950s Pittsburgh, has been shortchanged by history, whereas Washington enters to deafening entrance applause and exits the theater to a pack of autograph hounds.
Statement: Producing the Play Fences
After reading the Fences script I see a few problems within the text that might cause a problem for the production. The first and potentially largest problem might be the language used if the right cast was not picked out to represent the characters. Since Fences is set in 1957 during some of the initial American school segregation law changes and the beginning of Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement there could be potential for dragging an audience through some tough memories about that time period. The nigger word written in the text could potentially cause the audience to be very uncomfortable and depending on how the director advises the cast during some of those scenes could be problematic for the show and its ratings. Another problem with the text could be the sexual innuendos associated with the affair of Troy and the child that comes to live with him after her mother’s death. This might be too mature for some audiences. The character playing Troy’s brother who is mentally disabled in the war could also cause some difficulty in how the audience perceives the stereotype of a Black family with a disabled member that is “used” for his financial money to aid the whole family. The director of Fences will need to consider the community and its own Black history and climate concerning these areas.
I see some Production Problems with this show. Fences is written to be cast as an all Black cast. This might cause some concern with the other races on a college campus. There may be other multi-cultural shows that get requested to even out the opportunity for students to perform during the year Fences is produced. This could cause some difficulty for a campus in that it could look like there is division among races. The director and producer will need to think this through about what is best for their campus theatre. There may also be a problem about whether there are enough Black actors on a campus with talent enough to pull off the full power of Fences. Fences needs an elaborate set with costumes, furniture, a fence, a yard and porch, perhaps even a car all dating from 1957. Some of these items might be difficult for a college campus to acquire or build. The theme of adultery and the fighting between the son and his father, Troy may be upsetting to the audience also because it could appear to be abusive. Though real fences are needed for the set, the real meaning of Fences is the racism issue and the audience can’t get too caught up in the fences on the set so as to distract from the fences in life racism can cause.
Here are some solutions that other Theater venues have done to prevent such concerns for the audience. Major characters played Troy with vibrant bitterness and anger, but managed to make Troy appear tragic rather than abusive in his life within the racism problems of 1957. His behaviors almost seem to be symptoms of his anger about not getting to be a famous baseball player and ending up as a garbage collector instead. The audience can feel sorry for Troy and at the same time see him for his lies and abusiveness, too, if a strong actor is cast in the role. Casting Denzel Washington and James Earl Jones were ways some productions achieved the perfect Troy mix for the character. Gabriel’s character should be played in such a way as to cause Troy’s character to feel both guilt and love for him since he is his bother. Rose and Troy, played by Viola Davis and Denzel Washington, brought such power in their opposite personalities and their love for each other that the flaws of Washington’s Troy character in his anger and adultery still caused the audience to feel love and compassion for him through Rose and her silent wisdom.
There were mixed reviews from critics about which actor carried Fences to please the audience. In the Broadway production of Fences starring Denzel Washington there was some strong positive reviews for Denzel Washington’s strength and powerful voice in the part of Troy.
The story itself wasn’t praised as much as the power Mr. Washington had in pulling the show together due to his strength as an actor and his ability to get into “Shakespearean” mode as he spoke.
This review was by Ben Brantley of The New York Times and can be found at http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/theater/reviews/27fences.html. According to Howard Pousner, of the Atlanta Arts and Culture blog, actress Viola Davis is the one Washington has to keep up with in this play.
This review can be read at http://blogs.ajc.com/arts-culture/2010/04/28/reviews-of-%E2%80%98fences%E2%80%25/99.
According to Tom O’Neil, Washington should land a Tony for his portrayal of Troy.
This review can be read at http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2010/04/can-fences-.html.
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