Washington shines in leonine act
contradictory and classically combative as his name suggests.
As Fences opens, Troy and his best friend Bono (Stephen Henderson) are just finishing their shift, with Troy complaining that the better-paid drivers’ jobs are unavailable to African-Americans. When the two repair to Troy’s backyard to share a bottle of gin and repartee, Troy’s talk continues, escalating into an exuberant recollection of when he stared down death during a bout of pneumonia.
Part of the audience’s fascination with Troy is how swiftly he conjures dramatically competing emotions: one moment we’re sympathising with him for not getting his shot as a professional baseball player, and the next he’s running down star players by pooh-poohing the Negro Leagues. One moment he embodies the kind of strength and selfreliance for which the American working class is deservedly lionised, the next he’s cruelly stamping out the ambitions of his teenage son Cory (Jovan Adepo), who wants to play football.
Overseeing Troy’s combustible mix of rage and remorse is his wife Rose, portrayed by Viola Davis in a magnificent performance rooted in stillness, but bursting with passion, life, superhuman fortitude and selfsacrifice. (Washington and Davis are reprising roles that earned each of them a Tony Award for the 2010 Broadway revival of Fences.)
The promise of heavenly reckoning is a constant presence in Fences, which among its many virtues gives the lie to this era’s facile condemnations of identity politics. Historical and structural realities inscribe themselves into our traumas and triumphs. The fates and legacies that clash and enmesh themselves throughout Fences are just as much products of Oedipal psychology and personal trauma as the Middle Passage and the Great Migration.
Those forces come together in the swirling vortex of Troy’s psyche. Wilson’s writing and Washington’s generous performance allow the audience to revel in Troy’s spiky humour and brusquely delivered home truths, even while wincing at his capacity for self-deception and brutishness.
Like all timeless personalities, Troy is a man for our era, whether he’s coming at us in full roar or by way of a far more haunting whisper. – Washington Post