Fences
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Fences hasn’t been professionally staged in Chicago since 1986, when the Goodman Theatre gave it a pre-Broadway tryout starring James Earl Jones. It’s anyone’s guess why, but the good news about the 20-year delay is that A.C. Smith is now old enough to play the middle-aged Troy. Court Theatre’s production, beautifully directed by Ron OJ Parson, allows this longtime local actor, who’s never gotten roles that fully exploit his powerful physicality and quicksilver instincts, to tear into a character with gusto, rage, and joy. Smith is well matched by the rest of the ensemble, so for anyone who loves Wilson’s work–or anyone who’s wondered what all the fuss is about–this show is unmissable.
The themes that Wilson would continue to illuminate (and occasionally belabor) in later works are all efficiently etched in Fences, the third play to be produced–but sixth chronologically–in his series depicting 20th-century African-American life decade by decade. As in King Hedley II, there’s a patch of earth in the backyard where plants struggle to grow. As in that play, Seven Guitars, and Gem of the Ocean, there’s a local mystic/head case: Troy’s brother Gabriel, who carries a trumpet for calling open the gates of heaven. And like Citizen Barlow in Gem of the Ocean, Troy fled his home in the south for the industrial north and committed a crime that resulted in a man’s death. Still, Wilson called Fences his “odd man out. All my other plays are ensemble pieces, but Fences has a main character with the others revolving around him.”
