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'Fences' is intimate, powerful

Director Lou Bellamy and his gifted cast have delivered a riveting production of August Wilson's masterwork about a bitter former baseball player.

By ROHAN PRESTON, Star Tribune

Last update: August 23, 2008 - 1:20 PM

'FENCES'

What: By August Wilson. Directed by Lou Bellamy.

Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul.

When: 7:30 p.m. today, 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sun., 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Thu. Ends Sept. 21.

Tickets: $18-$38 . 651-224-3180.

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There's a moment in "Fences" when garbageman and onetime baseball player Troy, drunk as a skunk, sits on the stairway of his fenced-in home in 1950s Pittsburgh. His estranged younger son, Cory, comes home, wanting to get his things. Not so nicely, Cory tells his old man to move out of the way. Troy takes umbrage at his son's disrespect. A fight with a baseball bat ensues, one that threatens to spill into Penumbra Theatre's intimate playhouse, taking us into it.

There's more than a bit of that kind of menacing anger in "Fences," which opened Thursday in St Paul. James A. Williams, who plays Troy, gives the performance of his life. From his thunderous laughter and the taut veins in his neck to the flash of anger in his eyes, Williams delivers a chiseled and engrossing performance as the brokenhearted center of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 masterwork.

There is not one false note in Lou Bellamy's funny, robust and riveting staging of this drama. He hits it way out of the park.

The play has a distinguished production history. James Earl Jones won a Tony Award for playing Troy on Broadway. But he has some serious competition at Penumbra, not least because the house is so intimate that you feel the energy of the actors as they whoosh by you on the way to the stage or as they coo or curse.

Wilson uses baseball as a metaphor and measure of dreams. Troy, now in his 50s, is saddened because he was unable to realize his gifts; he played baseball when a black man was not allowed to compete against whites (or to make a comparable living).

Unable to let go of his hurts, he buries them in drink and inflicts them on those around him, especially Cory (the casually gifted James T. Alfred). In the end, Troy is consumed by bitter history.

What makes this production so special is not that it hits you like a bat cracking a fastball; it does that with style. This show is so nuanced and palpable that it feels like you have been thrust into a dream. There are many elements of the design, including Don Darnutzer's ghost lights and C. Lance Brockman's set, that underscore the immediacy of the work.

"Fences" is a tragedy about Troy, a complicated figure who fills a room so fully that there's hardly any air left to breathe.

Still, he has a passel of people orbiting him, including his wife, Rose (Elayn Taylor), his best friend, Bono (Marion McClinton), his injured brother Gabriel (James Craven) as well as his other children, Lyons (Kevin D. West) and Raynell (Marianna McGee).

They perform like a tight, jamming band, modulating their moments with mastery and mystery. And they go so deeply into their characters that you might find yourself shouting out.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390

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