Stage Review: Hattiloo successfully tackles 'Fences'
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Bill Oakley (left) is Bono and T.C. Sharp takes on the lead role of Troy in a scene from the August Wilson drama “Fences” at Hattiloo Theatre.
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When stage and screen actor Charles "Roc" Dutton performed his tribute to the late playwright August Wilson in Memphis last year, he talked about the challenges actors face once cast in his plays.
Wilson's language, he said, was like Shakespeare. It's nearly impossible for an actor to ad lib out of a dropped line. "Nobody talks like that in real life," Dutton said of Wilson's singular writing style.
Paradoxically, Wilson's major contribution to the stage is his depiction of the reality of urban black life, including its language. His 10 plays represent the colloquial voice of 20th-century America.
It's a voice that sounds deceptively natural and yet poetically heightened in a powerful local production of his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Fences," running through Dec. 7 at the Hattiloo Theatre.
"Fences," penned between 1983 and 1987, represents a milestone for Hattiloo, a black repertory company that has been eyeing Wilson's best-known work since it was formed a couple of years ago, waiting until it had the experience to take it on.
The fluency of the language and the concision of the staging is a testament to increasingly focused direction by Ekundayo Bandele, the company's founder.
Intuitive actors are also vital to Wilson's work, and Bandele's cast gets high marks for evoking both laughter and tears from the audience.
T.C. Sharpe, seen in several Craig Brewer films, plays Troy Maxon, a larger-than-life character first created by the Tony-winning James Earl Jones.
Sharpe expertly portrays the two faces of Troy, at once a heroic model of self-empowerment, and also a husband and father trapped in the past by racial injustice.
The year is 1957, and while Troy has the courage to stand up to color barriers at work, he also views his son Cory's desire to go to college as an impossible dream for a black man. Sharpe is a gifted comedic performer, making his Troy a lovable storyteller and frisky husband. But his temper and stubbornness get the best of him, and Sharpe conveys Troy's inner conflict with a hint of sad inevitability. Troy just can't save himself.
While "Fences" is a showcase for Sharpe, his fellow performers draw out his explosive temperament.
When Troy dismissively steps off his pedestal, the face of Bill Oakley, as Troy's admiring friend Bono, crumbles into a bitter expression of disappointment and betrayal that everyone in the audience feels at the moment.
Patricia Smith plays Rose as a humble, passive helpmate to her brassy husband, until the moment he loses her respect, and Rose blossoms into her independence.
Though new to the stage, young actor Steven Fox as Troy's son Cory meaningfully portrays the frustrations of a youth stifled by his father.
Much love has gone into this staging of "Fences." With this show, the Hattiloo Theatre proves it not only can take on the works of America's Shakespeare, but it can also do them right.
-- Christopher Blank: 529-2305
"Fences"
Through Dec. 7 at Hattiloo Theatre. Shows are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $10-$18. Call 525-0009.
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