“Fences,” now on stage at Houston’s Alley Theatre, has been astounding audiences, critics and prize-givers ever since 1985, when the lights fist came up on Troy Maxson’s dirt yard and the porch of his inner-city Pittsburg two-story house. It insured that James Earl Jones would be remembered for more than Darth Vadar’s voice, and it signaled that author August Wilson, who had earned praise for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” just three years earlier, might have the staying power to join Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller on a metaphorical playwright’s Mt. Rushmore.
Denzel Washington and Viola Davis’s revival of the play on Broadway in 2010, earning them both Tony awards, and Washington’s 2016 film adaptation, only added to the play’s stature — not to mention the productions in countless regional theatres. I first saw the play in a vacant store space at Dallas’ Northpark Mall around 2005, and the play’s power awed me, despite the folding metal chairs and all.
Today, 51 years since actors playing Troy and his best friend Bono first walked into Troy’s dirt yard after a long week of hauling rubbish for the city, the play is as monumental as ever. Writing about the era of the play in the notes for the published text, Wilson describes its 1957 setting as a moment in utero: “Life was rich, full, and flourishing, The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, and the hot winds of change that would make the sixties a turbulent, racing, dangerous and provocative decade had not yet begun to blow full.”
The baseball reference is not happenstance. Baseball is almost as central to the play as race and family. But Wilson’s genius is not to make sports or, for that matter, race or family, the single pillar that the play rests on. More than anything, it is an updated Greek tragedy—the fall of Troy–which David Rainey as Troy gives a nod to every time he opens a gin pint and unobtrusively, almost unconsciously, pours out a few sips of libation to the gods.
It is the seeming inevitability of tragedy that holds the helm of this all-too-human story. And Wilson’s script handles it with rich, earthy language not of gods but of wounded men and women. It takes something as ordinary as a fence and turns it into a metaphor for complex human needs. When Troy wonders why his wife Rose has him building a fence since “She ain’t got nothing nobody want,” his friend stretches the image: “Some people build fences to keep people out… and other people build fences to keep people in.”
Sports, family, race—all have their fences. Wilson’s script confronts them all along with ordinary human weakness and strength.
The Alley’s production faces these gargantuan topics like a batter at the plate, and like Troy it swings for the bleachers. David Rainey, familiar to Alley regulars as Scrooge in their holiday production, takes on the role of Troy and scores an emotional home run. He does so not by being a larger than life but fading star as Jones and Washington played Troy in their productions, but by being a more down-to-earth but consistent player in the lineup. Audiences will see more of themselves in Rainey’s Troy than they might in the hands of more physically massive performers. Whether he’s shooting the breeze with Bono, trying to keep his teenage son under his thumb, or loving on Rose, he always shows his struggle.
As Troy’s wife Rose, Michelle Elaine is a woman who will give and bend a lot, but who has a point where she goes no further. Lovely to the eye whether handing clothes on a line or lining a garden edge with rocks, she is tender with her son Cory and supportive of Troy, but she will not be walked on. When late in the play she ends a scene by announcing to Troy, “this child got a mother. But you a womanless man,” the audience audibly reacts with a perfect blend of support and horror. Elaine creates a performance divisively sharp.
In the two best supporting roles, Troy’s son Cory and his friend Bono, Aramie Payton and Alex Morris are stalwarts standing at opposite generational poles. As Cory, Payton shows astonishing energy, whether dancing up the steep porch stairs, sneaking out with his football gear, or sawing on fence boards, but he can change his mood like any adolescent when his father reins him in. As Bono, Alex Morris carries the weight of years of struggle in his ample frame. Coming down the porch steps is a chore—as is not violating the boundaries of his bonds with Troy. Wiping his brow with a handkerchief or pulling his frame up Troy’s steep street, he embodies the quiet sense of presence that defines a long, true friendship.
These are strong actors in meaty parts, but equally amazing and memorable is Timothy Eric’s work as Troy’s brother Gabriel, a man who returned from military service with a metal plate in his head, angelic hallucinations, love for his brother, and a desire to be on his own. Initially, he seems merely a bit of color for the background, but Eric and the part worm their way into the audience’s minds and hearts. And he will have the last ambiguous word of the script, challenging audiences to decide for themselves how far Troy makes it round the bases in Wilson’s moral landscape.
Equally important as the actors, Scott Bradley’s set design is both true to Wilson’s descriptions and a revelation in naturalistic imagery. He creates a sense of the cramped feeling defining Troy’s yard—a yard so small that Troy’s practice rag ball must hang from a branch high in the air to stay within bounds. The Maxson’s down-on-its-luck, dusty red brick house towers over the yard and stretches into the rafters like haunted monuments, despite being only two stories. Another house on one side almost abuts the Maxsons’, and a steep cobbled street or alley on the other side—a passage so narrow Bono can sit on the neighbor’s ash bin and converse with Troy swinging his bat. It captures visually the squeeze of life as the Maxsons experience it, the claustrophobic pressing in of the urban world.
Director Eileen J. Morris uses every inch of the space to keep her actors moving in their tight quarters as they metaphorically dance around each other in their relationships. And not surprisingly, dance will be the play’s final symbol, one which Morris, with a sense of tact and care refuses to press on the audience, leaving the living space to do its work in their minds.
If I haven’t made it clear by now, I confess that I would pay for a seat to see “Fences” if the performers were hand puppets and the setting my neighbor’s backyard. The script alone can almost carry the day. But merge it with a solid and thoughtful production such as this one at the Alley, and it can bring audiences’ faith in theatre back from the brink like an expertly handled defibrillator. See it and be shocked and glad to be alive.
“Fences” is at Houston’s Alley Theatre through May 10.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.