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Jan 10, 2006 Fences


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Fences | Critical Overview


When Fences first opened on Broadway in March of 1987, Wilson had already spent four years in pre-production revisions to his play. James Earl Jones, who won a Tony Award for his performance in the Broadway production, had first played Troy Maxson in the Yale Repertory Theatre production two years earlier. His ease and interpretation of an already familiar character were evident to reviewers who hailed Jones's performance. Allan Wallach, in his Newsday review, said that Jones gave this role "its full measure of earthiness and complexity." Jones, said Wallach, was at his best when Troy is drinking and laughing with his friends; his "performance is at its heartiest in the bouts of drinking and bantering." Wallach also singled out Wilson's ability to capture the "rhythms of his characters" who gather in the yard of the Maxson home, a yard that "becomes a rich portrait of a man who scaled down his dreams to fit inside his run-down yard." Wallach's review is an acknowledgment of Wilson's strength in "depicting a black man forced to come to terms with an unfeeling white world." However, Wallach also found that the scenes where Troy interacts with his family sometimes fell to conventional family fare.

Reviewer Clive Barnes offered no such distinction in his review that appeared in the New York Post. Barnes called Fences a play that "seems to break away from the confines of art into a dense, complex realization of reality." Fences is a play that makes the audience forget it is in a theater, thinking instead that they are witnessing a real family drama. Barnes also singled out Jones for praise in a role that left the reviewer "transfixed." But Wilson was also praised for writing drama "so engrossing, so embracing, so simply powerful" that he transcended an effort to label him a black playwright. Instead, Wilson's ability to tell a story makes such labels, in Barnes's opinion, "irrelevant." Barnes also praised the play for its historic relevance and cited the lessons Troy learned while in prison and his experience playing baseball. Barnes declared that Wilson has created "the strongest, most passionate American dramatic writing since Tennessee Williams." Barnes's review contained no reservations. He praised the actors, noting that Jones' s performance was not the only excellent one of the production and offered equal approval for the staging and setting. The sum total of these elements resulted in what Barnes described as "one of the richest experiences I have ever had in the theatre."

Edwin Wilson's praise of Fences was just as full of compliments as that of Barnes and Wallach. In his Wall Street Journal review, Wilson stated that with Fences, the author had demonstrated that he can "strike at the heart, not just of the black experience, but of the human condition." Troy is a character who is multi-dimensional; his complexity reveals a man "with the full measure of his shortcomings as well as his strengths " The audience witnesses the characters' depth of ambition, their frustration, and their pain, according to this reviewer. As did other reviewers, Wilson also noted the exceptional quality of the setting and the staging. Fences, said Wilson, is "an especially welcome and important addition to the season."

©2000-2006 Enotes.com LLC


Fences | Cory Maxson


Cory is the Maxsons' teenage son. When the play opens he is being actively recruited for a college football scholarship. His father feels that he is spending too much time at practice and ignoring his other responsibilities. Cory represents all the possibilities his father never had, but he also represents Troy's unmet dreams. Troy wants his son to achieve a future that does not include hauling garbage. Yet the father is unwilling to let the son attempt something that may bring him success; Troy is afraid that the world of white-dominated sports will only break Cory's heart.

When Cory quits his job to concentrate on football, his father retaliates by going to the coach and forbidding Cory to play. After a particularly heated confrontation, Cory leaves home. At the play's end, he returns after an absence of seven years for his father's funeral. Cory has spent the last six years as a Marine, but he is now considering a new direction that includes marriage and a new job. Initially he does not want to attend his father's funeral, the chasm is too wide, and he believes his controlling father never loved him. He eventually realizes that he must put the past behind him, forgive his father, and attend the funeral.

©2000-2006 Enotes.com LLC

Fences | Gabriel Maxson


Gabriel is Troy's brother. Troy has helped care for Gabriel since World War II during which his brother received a debilitating head injury. Gabriel's mental capacity has been diminished by the injury and left him believing that he is the archangel Gabriel. Troy used Gabriel's disability settlement to buy the house in which the family lives, and he continues to receive a part of Gabriel's monthly benefit checks as rent. When the play opens, Gabriel has just moved into his own lodgings. His life is filled with his singing and his expressed wait for St. Peter to call upon Gabriel to open the gates of heaven.

After bailing Gabriel out of jail several times, Troy finally has him committed to a mental hospital. At the play's end, it is Gabriel who brings some resolution as he calls for the gate of heaven to open and admit Troy. Gabriel attempts to blow a trumpet to herald Troy into heaven, finds that the mouthpiece is broken, and begins a jumping about and howling as the stage darkens.

©2000-2006 Enotes.com LLC

Fences | Troy Maxson


Troy is the principal character. He is fifty-three when the play begins. He has led a hard life, raised by an abusive father and later jailed for robbery and murder. During the fifteen years he spent in jail, Troy became an accomplished baseball player. But after his release from jail Troy was too old to play in the newly-integrated major leagues. He is bitter and resentful at the opportunities lost because of the color of his skin and is desperate to protect Cory from the same sort of disappointment. Troy lives in the past and fails to recognize that the world has changed. His father was brutal and controlling, and although Troy loves Cory, he knows of no other way to bring up a son. Thus, he repeats the mistakes of the previous generation.

Troy feels a need to control every element of his life and even declares that he will fight death if necessary. His affair with Alberta represents his attempt to escape the responsibility he feels for wife, son, and home. Unable to open up to those that he loves, Troy keeps much of his emotion inside, building imaginary fences between himself and his family and friends. While he realizes the financial responsibility of being the head of a family, he fails to grasp the emotional part of the job. Troy finally succeeds in isolating himself from his wife, his brother, his sons, and his friend.



©2000-2006 Enotes.com LLC
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