Five star review of Fences at Leeds Playhouse

It might seem odd to say of a play that was awarded a Tony, a Drama Desk Award and an actual Pulitzer Prize: but it feels like August Wilson’s Fences might be under-appreciated.

Daniel Bailey’s production will convince you that this Shakespearean epic should be mentioned, when discussing American classics, in the same breath as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Miller’s towering achievement was staged at this theatre’s enormous Quarry Theatre in 2010 and it earned the space. Ray Fearon, as Troy, the tragic hero of Wilson’s magnum opus, feels almost hemmed in by the smaller Courtyard theatre - although given that this is a story of a man attempting to survive in a cage too small to contain him, perhaps the constraint is a help rather than hindrance to the story.

Fences premiered in 1985 and grew in stature thanks to a 2016 Oscar-winning film. Rarely seen in the UK, Headlong leads this production which opens at Leeds Playhouse ahead of a national tour. The story of a black man in an America that hadn’t wrestled with the likes of Muhammad Ali and was therefore too immature in its development to make space for as great a sportsman as Troy Maxson ‘coulda been’, it’s tempting to say that this is a story that speaks to today, but like all truly great plays, it is timeless.

In Bailey’s hands the play is allowed the space to peel back its many layers to become a treatise on fatherhood and masculinity, on marriage, on the Black experience and on humanity and who is granted it.

Much hinges on the actor playing Troy, given the lengthy monologues Wilson grants the character and Ray Fearon holds the stage like a more powerful version of Rooster, a similar character from another modern classic, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Here is a performance of enormous power, one that Fearon expertly controls, holding Troy’s rage at the impotence he feels at his own circumstances, just below the surface.

To keep abreast with Fearon here the cast needs to be on top of their game and every single member of the cast matches him. Madeline Appiah as Troy’s wife Rose is the peacekeeper between her volatile husband and her deeply loved son, Cory, played with an open heart by Josh Tedeku. Leeds stalwart Everal A Walsh continues to prove his worth as Troy’s friend Bono and Simon-Anthony Rhoden as Troy’s damaged brother Gabriel is a heartbreaking scene stealer, constantly seeking reassurance that his family loves him.

This is an extraordinary production of a truly extraordinary play. Everything theatre can be.

To September 26.