Out of the Park

don't fence me in: (l-R) Damien J. Wallace (Troy), Darryl A. Bell Jr. (Bono) and Donna Marie Earl (Rose) in the Ritz's production of the August Wilson play. Photo By: Curt Hudson

by Toby Zinman

August Wilson is everywhere this season. With Gem of the Ocean having just closed on Broadway and his newest, Radio Golf, about to open next month at Yale Rep, and with three (!) concurrent local productions of Fences (Arden, Ritz and Bristol) and one local production of Jitney (Temple), what's a critic to do? I chose two Fences, and although comparisons are famously odious, they are also interesting; seeing two productions of one play in less than 24 hours can make for insights and discoveries, especially if the script is as rich as this one.

In Wilson's immense project, a cycle of plays representing the 20th-century black experience decade by decade, Fences is the '50s, a pivotal decade in history: "Times have changed since you was young, Troy. People change, the world's changing around you and you can't even see it." The Ritz production puts far more emphasis on the changing world through radio broadcasts (Hank Aaron, Little Rock), while the Arden production emphasizes the changing people.

The father/son conflict centers on sports — at least on the surface. Troy, an illiterate trash collector, was a great baseball player before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier, but he also spent 15 years in prison for murder. His son, Cory, has been recruited for a college football scholarship, but his father refuses to sign the permission papers and forces him to work at the A&P instead; his motivations for the refusal are ambiguous. The family's drama is extended to Rose, Troy's wife and Cory's mother, and Lyons, an unemployed musician, who is Troy's son from his first marriage. Bono, Troy's old friend, and Gabe, Troy's damaged brother who chases hellhounds and plans to trumpet in Judgment Day, provide additional complexities and emotional depth. We get important glimpses into Troy's brutal childhood, along with mentions of Lyons' and Bono's home lives, all woven into the fabric of the play as naturally as if we lived in the Pittsburgh neighborhood.

At the Arden, director Timothy Douglas has created a superb and subtle production where the emphasis is — visually and emotionally — on fences. "Some people build fences to keep people out … and other people build fences to keep people in." Douglas keeps moving the fine fence between freedom and safety, refusing to give us any easy answers, avoiding every cliche.

The cast is almost uniformly fine, allowing us to see subtle changes in the characters: Ernest Perry Jr.'s Troy starts out as a charming, confident blowhard and becomes a grim, defensive man-on-the-run. Stephanie Berry's Rose changes imperceptibly during her impassioned monologue from loyal and loving to cold and embittered. Brian Anthony Wilson makes Lyons, a character often read as just a sleazebag, into a self-aware, likeable guy. In fact, one of the distinguishing features of this deeply sympathetic production is that everybody is likeable, the way people are likeable, just because they're human and trying to cope. The weak link in the cast is Bowman Wright's Cory — too slim and too soft-spoken to be fully audible or to be a convincingly enraged football player/Marine.

The evocative set (designed by Tony Cisek) of a realistic back porch and yard and its ever-growing fence is made more interesting by the sky-high trash containers that hedge the house in, but why is the baseball hung so that the right-handed actor has to bat left-handed? (Details like that drive me nuts.)

At the Ritz, director Bruce Robinson emphasizes — visually and emotionally — the baseball bat. There is intriguing merit in this raw physicality as an interpretation of the play; nobody really changes, just their circumstances. Damien J. Wallace's Troy is far nastier, while Rose (Donna Marie Earl) remains wifely and upset and full of attitude. Gabe (Keith H. Henley) here is just a loud clown, while the Arden's Gabe (Ray Anthony Thomas) finds and conveys the character's holy madness. The Ritz's Cory (Kalief Ali) has the belligerent bulk to make the impressive fight scene convincing. Both Raynells (Lauryn Simone Jones and Kiah Moore) are absolutely adorable.

The only glaring flaw in the Ritz production is the sound design: Each too-long break between scenes is filled with songs whose lyrics distract from and seem to add to the language of the play.

Any play (and it's a long one — nearly three hours) that can hold my attention twice in a weekend is a play to be reckoned with, and I recommend you try the experiment yourselves. Maybe you can even manage all three!

FENCES Through April 3, Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St., 215-922-1122
Through April 3, Ritz Theatre, 915 White Horse Pike, Oaklyn, N.J., 856-858-5230

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