The “Pittsburgh Cycle’’ established him as one of the most important playwrights of the past half-century - a status that is only confirmed by the outstanding new Huntington Theatre Company production of Wilson’s “Fences.’’ Director Kenny Leon again shows his affinity for Wilson’s work, eliciting electric performances from his cast.
At the heart of much of Wilson’s work is the impact of huge social forces on individual lives, and “Fences,’’ which is set in 1957, does grapple with the destructive effects of segregation. But it is also, like Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,’’ concerned with the ripple effect of huge familial forces - in other words, fathers - and the way their words and deeds can shape their sons. As the epigraph to the published version of his play, Wilson wrote: “When the sins of our fathers visit us/We do not have to play host. . .’’
Easier said than done, as this production of “Fences’’ shows.
Troy Maxson (John Beasley), the 53-year-old protagonist of “Fences,’’ is a force of nature. Think hurricane. Troy is a big man with big flaws and big appetites, a teller of tall tales and hard truths alike. He is building a fence for his wife, Rose (Crystal Fox), but he always has time to deliver an aphorism (“Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner’’) or take a few swings with a baseball bat at a bundle of rags dangling from a tree in his backyard.
Troy knows he got lucky in the woman he married: Rose is a steadying counterpoint to his volatility. But in other ways, Troy has been dealt a bad hand. He works as a garbage collector, but there was a time when he aspired to a lot more. He had been a top slugger in the Negro leagues in the 1940s, but in those years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, that was as far as a black ballplayer could go, no matter how talented. Troy lives with the bitter conviction that he could have been a star in the major leagues. “You just come along too early,’’ his friend Jim Bono tells him, to which Troy retorts: “There ought not never have been no time called too early!’’
