As Troy’s brother Gabriel, a damaged WWII veteran who serves as the play’s holy fool, Mykelti Williamson shoulders the hard task of making a problematically stage-bound character work in a more realistic medium. Adepo grows sympathetically from boy to man as he tilts against the father who’s shutting down his future. The other actors go up against this performance as best they can. His Troy is more actively an architect of his own downfall. READ MORE: Denzel Washington Stuns with ‘Fences’: How He Dodged Broadway’s Stagey Curse Fences Since his breakout in 1984’s A Soldier’s Story, Washington has built his movie-star. While his Troy lacks the brute heft conveyed by James Earl Jones, who originated the role (and also won a Tony) in 1987 - the “largeness informs his sensibilities and the choices he has made in life,” according to Wilson’s opening description of the character - Washington’s interpretation is leaner, meaner, smarter. It’s a meaty, showy part for Washington and he knows it. Wilson, who died in 2005, took territory that Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller had explored and made it his own, and in a climactic scene in which Troy rails against the figure of Death he senses coming in on the storm, “Fences” approaches the majesty and tragedy of “King Lear.” Each play dramatizes and mulls over different aspects of the black American experience many deal with the fraught relationships between fathers and sons all are rich with living language and personalities. This play is sixth in the chronology of Wilson’s 10-part “Pittsburgh Cycle,” one play for each decade and many of them masterpieces (“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “The Piano Lesson”).
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