Review: The Rep's Sublime FENCES Proves Wilson's Portrait of Humanity Humbles the American Dream

Milwaukee Rep closes a successful season in sublime style staging a production of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winning play Fences on the Quadracci Powerhouse stage. Lou Bellamy, who worked extensively with the acclaimed African-American playwright at St. Paul, Minnesota's Penumbra Theatre Company, directed the spellbinding Rep performance. On a stunning, realistic set courtesy of Vicki Smith, the Pittsburgh brownstone with a comfortable wood porch, "lays in the lap of the audience on the thrust stage" according to the Rep In Depth, and places Wilson's flawed characters directly near the seats of the theatergoers, Seats where Wilson's portrait of humanity, seen through the African American experience, exposes compassion and struggle.

The sixth play in Wilson's "Twentieth Century" or "Pittsburgh Cycle," his series of ten plays for ten decades happens from 1904 through 1997. Fences illustrates the African American legacy in 1957. Throughout this two plus hour performance, a middle age sanitation worker, Troy Maxon, undertakes the building of a fence surrounding his urban yard mid 20th century. There he lives with his wife Rose and their teenage son, Cory An older son Lyons from a previous relationship weaves in and out of their lives while his dear friend who Troy met in prison Jim Bono comments on how long the fence will take to complete. Bono will buy his wife the new refrigerator she wants when Troy completes his fence, Bono promises to Troy at the play's beginning.

This distinguished cast carries America's mid 1950's life in their hearts and on their backs trying to achieve the American Dream day by day, whether that means keeping a job, cooking dinner, or trying to build a savings account for a rainy day or retirement. David Alan Anderson passionately recreates Troy, a man dashed by his dream to become a baseball player and instead finds himself driving a sanitation truck, the first African American in the city to be a driver. He has been responsible, even amid adversity, and perhaps as he says, "not liking" his son born to he and Rose, although he provides for Cory-the impressive actor Edgar Sanchez-even while Troy rejects, opposes Cory's desire to play football and gain a college scholarship. In part because Troy was banned from baseball due to the color of his skin, or his advanced age when he tried out for a Major League Baseball team.

The delightful Kim Stanton plays Troy's wife Rose, who holds this family together in her heart and by giving her all to the three men-Troy, Cory and Gabriel, Troy's brother injured in the war. Terry Bellamy imbues the brain wounded Gabriel with a dignity, poignant in his portrayal of a man lost to the current world and found by his loving supportive family. who accepts him as he is. Later in the play, two young performers, Makayla Davis and Maya O'Day Biddle alternate performances, and give Rose another reason to live when they play a young girl Rose raises from birth, Raynell, who helps heal the hurts the family experienced over the years.

Marcus Naylor and James T. Alfred round out the cast in the roles of Troy's friend, Bono, and Troy's eldest son, Lyons. Every actor in The Rep's powerful production wins and loses in the life Wilson writes about. After 25 years, Wilson's characters and scenarios reach far beyond the 1950's racial experience into the depths of the 21st century. At the end, Troy finishes the fence he built to keep death and the hellhounds he hallucinates away from his house. Wilson then writes, "Some people build fences to keep people out, some people build fences to keep people in."

A fence at the back of my house recently blew down in a wind storm, and the city then petitioned to have this removed instead of rebuilt. After the fence came down, the neighbors, previously never met or seen were exposed--and they were wonderful, a delightful surprise that went unnoticed for years. Other types of fences do exist in contemporary society-especially in light of a very recent 2015 economic study by Nobel Prize Laureate Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Case detailed by several articles written for The Washington Post.

The Deaton/Case economic study highlights white women between the ages of 25 and 55 are seeing an unprecedented rise in premature death. Suffering in rural areas reduced to ghost towns and rubble by technology, the profuse prescription of opiods, heroin addictions, alcohol abuse, lower wages defined by poor economies and broken families contribute to women dying in numbers equal to lives lost in the American Civil War, including deaths from their suicide rates that has doubled since the turn of the 21st century.

In his play Fences, Wilson portrays an African American family beset with devastated dreams from numerous circumstances-dreams consistently out of reach for many other people by fences society builds to keep others outside the status quo.. Today those deferred or devastated dreams extend to multiple demographic groups. Discrepancies in earning power, health care and job opportunities erect fences between rural and urban populations, the educated and undedicated, citizens and immigrants, and unfortunately, inequalities between men and women along with the racial fences that continue to plague American society. These discrepancies hold true for many ethnicities, and has just been documented recently for white, middle aged women while other social groups will follow if the fences continue to exist.

Bellamy in an exquisite directorial Rep debut extends Wilson's iconic legacy past the 1950's African American culture into the far reaches of rural America asking what happened to the American Dream? The Maxon's brownstone exists literally and metaphorically in 2016 throughout rural places in states across the nation and in central urban cities, with many people living pay check to pay check trying to save money "To tar their roof," buy a reliable car, or pay for a much needed visit to the doctor.

What can the middle/working class of any colored skin or ethnicity expect in the years ahead and what political climate will restore the future for more balanced equality and equity? What fences will be either be torn down or ripped apart to resurrect the belief in the American Dream? A must see theatrical event, this sublime production of Fences asks questions that can only be answered through profound reflection by The Rep audiences.

Milwaukee Rep presents August Wilson's Fences in the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater at the Patty and Jay Baker Theater complex through May 22. For further information on 2016-2017 season tickets, or tickets to the performance, please call: 414.224.949o or www.milwaukeerep.com

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