Fences Broadway Reviews

Denzel Washington is the draw for this revival of August Wilson's 'Fences.' But it's the play itself that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats: This is pure, unabashed melodrama -- the kind where the line 'Got something to tell you' never introduces good news. The 1987 play, which won both the Pulitzer and Tony, may not be Wilson's most sophisticated effort -- brace yourself for multiple baseball analogies -- but it's one of his most emotionally effective. And it feels good to be taken for a ride by such a storyteller, especially when the ride is as delicately staged, as gorgeously acted as it is here.

The star of a show doesn't always get top billing. Denzel Washington is by far the biggest name associated with the first Broadway revival of August Wilson's 'Fences,' but my guess is that it's Viola Davis whose performance is going to stick with you. Not that Mr. Washington is anything less than solid, but Ms. Davis is something else again. I knew she was a remarkable artist—anyone who saw her in the Off-Broadway premiere of Lynn Nottage's 'Intimate Apparel' or the film version of John Patrick Shanley's 'Doubt' knows that—but what she's doing this time around goes straight into my scrapbook of stage performances from which you learn how brutally true to life great acting can be.

Washington seems to have seized upon Rose's comment that when Troy 'walked through the house, he was so big he filled it up.' If he sank fully into his character, an outsize performance could work. But Washington never lets you forget you're watching him act. That fact is amplified by director Kenny Leon's tendency to overemphasize the play's inherent soapiness. Lines are underlined and spelled out in capital letters. It doesn't draw you in to Wilson's characters, but builds a fence between you and them.

Kenny Leon's lightweight production captures the intricate rhythms of Wilson's language, but never moves beyond the play's surface. Though enjoyable, this 'Fences' feels less like a substantial drama than a broad sitcom comedy stuffed with melodramatic shocks and awes. Washington comes off not as Troy, but a charismatic movie star wearing an unglamorous sanitation jumpsuit as a lark.

But Washington's Troy, while vigorous and charismatic, isn't long on nuance; and in that sense it is of a piece with the staging. Directed by Kenny Leon, an experienced and astute purveyor of Wilson's work, this Fences makes the characters' struggles briskly accessible and absorbing, but doesn't always capture their depth and resonance.

No, you don't need to frontload the production with a star to mount a successful revival of 'Fences.' August Wilson's 1987 drama, the Pulitzer Prize-winning centerpiece of his 10-play Century Cycle about the African-American experience, is a masterpiece, and this meticulously mounted production does it proud. That said, it definitely does not hurt to have a high-wattage superstar like Denzel Washington toplining the show in the role originally defined by James Earl Jones. Although quirkily cast as a gruff, middle-aged sanitation worker, Washington turns in a heartfelt performance as one of the true tragic heroes of modern American theater.

Viola Davis is sensational as Rose, the devoted and betrayed wife. Wilson’s lyrical script offers any number of stirring monologues, and Ms. Davis delivers hers—especially when she learns of Troy’s betrayal—with a vivid, bracing rawness. She more than holds her own against Mr. Washington, both in their tender scenes and in their explosive ones. It’s no small feat, and she does it without too much shouting.

Leon — who helmed Wilson’s final two works, Gem of the Ocean and Radio Golf — has built a sturdy, buffed-to-a-sheen Fences, buoyed by a top-shelf supporting cast (Henderson is the quintessential Wilson interpreter) and Branford Marsalis’ beautiful bluesy between-scenes music. Pity that he’s glossed over the play’s doleful, poetic soul.

First seen in New York in 1987 with James Earl Jones, 'Fences' has now returned with an equally starry actor, Denzel Washington in the lead. Washington, last on Broadway in 2005 in a production of 'Julius Caesar,' acquits himself well in this blistering revival, directed with a sure, steady hand by Wilson veteran Kenny Leon. It's a big, bold performance in a big, bold play, rife with emotion-drenched soliloquies for its star about life, love, death and the devil.

Six years ago, gifted director Kenny Leon delivered a fine production of 'A Raisin in the Sun' to Broadway, marred only by the stage inexperience of its bankable star, Sean Combs. Back with another classic chronicling the African-American experience, and this time with the right star in place, Leon knocks it out of the park with this beautifully calibrated realization of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize–winning 'Fences.' Denzel Washington is magnificent in the role indelibly created by James Earl Jones, and the astonishing Viola Davis matches him every step of the way. It's a deeply moving, hugely satisfying evening of theater.

Davis, with every wary sidelong look, firm demurral, and careful burst of laughter, perfects and completes Washington’s already tremendous performance. Her approach to Rose turns the trope of the dutiful black mother on end, and suggests a world inside her domestic redoubt that even the play can only begin to imagine. Leon may have missed a few opportunities to coax a bit more vulnerability out of Washington; one climactic second-act scene in particular falls badly askew as a result, suggesting grotesque comedy where none is called for. But Davis finds a way to supply it on the side. It’s tremendous work from a rightly revered actress of uncommon subtlety. Playing wife to a god, of any size, is no small thing.

But Troy’s interactions with Rose are what give “Fences” its moments of genuine glory. Ms. Davis, who won a Tony for her performance in Wilson’s “King Hedley II,” may well pick up another for her work here. Her face is a poignant paradox, both bone-tired and suffused with sensual radiance. Rose has resigned herself to her life in a way Troy cannot, but that doesn’t mean there’s not passionate yearning within. What Troy rants about, Rose keeps to herself, and Ms. Davis draws extraordinary power from that reticence; you never feel that Rose is any less deep than her husband. You can sense, so palpably that it hurts, why Troy and Rose were meant to be together, and when it looked as if the marriage might be going south at the performance I attended, you could hear horrified gasps in the audience. Mr. Washington and Ms. Davis prove that lovers don’t have to be as young and star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet to generate shiver-making heat and pathos.

Despite its 1987 Pulitzer Prize and its Tony Award, 'Fences' always was a glorious mess of a drama. As the second of what became August Wilson's monumental 10-play journey through African-American life in the 20th century, the early work is more plotted, structurally clumsy and melodramatic than the rest of the cycle. And that's the last negative observation you'll read in this space. 'Fences' has been magnificently revived - in all its messy glory - by director Kenny Leon with a splendid ensemble topped, but not dwarfed, by Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.

Leon elicits sensitive work from Hornsby and the stalwart Stephen McKinley Henderson as Troy’s loyal coworker friend, Jim Bono. And, with her second-act breakdown upon hearing that Troy has betrayed her, Davis blows the roof off the Cort with the spectacle of a soul in agony. No one does good-woman-done-wrong with Davis’s volcanic fury. Happily, Washington keeps pace with her on the other side of the temperature spectrum. When Fences first swept Broadway 23 years ago, James Earl Jones’s Troy was reportedly phenomenal. But Washington shows he can hit his share out of the park, too.

Certainly, Washington eroticizes Troy, a character typically played by more stentorian actors with deeper bass notes and thicker girths (although Washington has put on a few pounds and wants not for gravitas). But that potent sexual appeal — underexpressed in most productions of this oft-revived masterpiece — is very much a part of Troy. He was, after all, a star athlete of the Negro Leagues, and his married state doesn't prevent him from bedding a much younger woman (unseen but with enthusiasm implied) and fathering her child. Viola Davis, who plays Rose, the wife Troy betrays, uses that more powerful sense of sexual betrayal to fuel the play's famous Act 2 howl of anguish with such force that you're moved to tears. If Troy is already a broken, angry man, Rose hasn't lost much. But when you're losing Denzel Washington to some cheap floozy — well, the stakes can't help but rise.

His movie-star charisma on full display, Washington infuses his compelling turn with equal doses of raucous humor and barely contained violence that keep the audience constantly off-guard. He's beautifully matched by Davis, who conveys her character's indefatigable inner strength and endless reserves of warmth so vividly that when her character suffers a deep betrayal in Act 2, the effect is shattering.

Troy Maxson deserves a place alongside Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman as a towering figure in American drama, and Denzel Washington is showing us why with a commanding performance in the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s 1987 “Fences.”