“Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner,” says Troy Maxson, the central figure in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, currently on stage at Cygnet Theater.  Troy is a mix of bravado and nurtured bitterness, and he taunts death throughout the play.  He claims to have wrestled with both death and the devil, though it’s clear as this story unfolds, Troy’s personal demons aren’t giving up the fight.  

Troy is played by Antonio T.J. Johnson in this terrific co-production between Cygnet and the San Diego Black Ensemble Theater.  I loved this play.  Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs a talented group of actors who make Wilson’s beautiful dialogue both sing and resonate.

Johnson, as Troy, is superb (the role of Troy was played by James Earl Jones on Broadway, and he won a Tony for it). He has fun with Troy’s ego-driven swagger while keeping the character’s self-doubt in play.  Johnson uses his size to great effect, making Troy a domineering figure but also agile and fluid. The anger in his physicality softens when he warms to his wife Rose (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, who is wonderful) or when grief takes over.

Wilson wrote Fences as part of a ten-play cycle charting the black experience in America.  Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th century (the cycle’s other Pulitzer Prize winner is The Piano Lesson).  The series is sometimes called The Pittsburgh Cycle because nine of the ten plays are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, an African-American neighborhood in the Pennsylvania manufacturing town where Wilson grew up.  

John Lahr (one of my heroes - he writes with such grace about the arts), the senior drama critic at The New Yorker, wrote of Wilson's plays: "The blues are catastrophe expressed lyrically; so are Wilson’s plays, which swing with the pulse of the African-American people, as they moved, over the decades, from property to personhood."

The themes in Fences are familiar to the stories we often tell.  There are stories of fathers and sons, and the struggles of marriage.  There’s the struggle for dignity in work and the pain of dreams denied.  And, most importantly, there is the story of race;  of how these familiar, universal themes unfold through the African-American experience. 

It’s also a story firmly rooted in its time:  1957.  Troy Maxson was a talented baseball player in the Negro Leagues.  He was too old to play in the Majors by the time the leagues integrated, which left him burning with resentment.   He’s now a garbage collector, trying to advance to driving the truck instead of picking up the white man’s trash.  On Fridays, Troy and his longtime friend Bono drink on the front porch, telling stories, bragging on past conquests and sexual prowess, and playing host to Troy’s family members.

Troy’s son Clay (Patrick Kelly) wants to play football, and he’s being looked at by recruiters.  But Troy doesn’t want his son to play sports.  He’s certain that racism will hold Clay back, but he’s also unable to imagine Clay succeeding where he didn't.   Clay sees a different world, not one without racism, but certainly one he’d like to challenge.  Troy is cruel to his sons, the easy targets for his own self-hatred.

Don’t be fooled by the subject matter into thinking Fences isn’t funny.   I laughed often.  The script is bursting with family stories, each one a mix humor and tragedy.  The dialogue moves with colloquial rhythms, especially in the first act, which is brilliant.  Not a lot happens in the first act, yet I was completely caught up in this front porch world where Wilson masterly reveals the depths of Troy and his family's dysfunction.  

Fences is a classic piece of American dramatic theater and this production is one to be admired -- well-directed and acted, and not to be missed.