Lenny Henry Stars in August Wilson’s Fences

If any doubts still remained over Lenny Henry’s capabilities as an actor, they will surely have been swept away by his powerful performance as Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences, a play regarded by many as the ultimate, founding African-American drama.

The now deceased Pulitzer prize-winning playwright aimed to bring the untold African-American experience to the stage. Entitled ‘The Pittsburgh Cycle’, each work in his series of ten plays examines a different decade; Fences looks at the uncomfortable bedfellows ‘hope’ and ‘disillusionment’, in the 1950s. With a set consisting simply of a ‘shotgun house’ (so called because you could fire a single bullet straight through both the front and back doors), director Paulette Randall captures the claustrophobia of both the Maxson family and post-war Pittsburgh.

The play sees Maxson, a grizzled, middle-aged tragic hero, becoming increasingly disillusioned with the American experience. Hardworking and loyal, the injustice of his exclusion from Major League Baseball is now spilling over into his more mundane working life as a refuse collector. Troy is ‘fenced’ by his own timeframe, and resentful of his two sons. Sound familiar? For students of American drama, it should do. Comparisons between it and Death of a Salesman are far from rare, yet while academic discussion about Arthur Miller’s Loman is plentiful, the story of Maxson is less well known.

Henry, in a tour de force performance, fills not only the stage but the entire auditorium with a drawling Pittsburgh accent that belies his Dudley roots. The comedian-turned-actor has spoken of the difficulties of learning lines that contain double, even triple negatives, yet by the second act, he could have been speaking full Patois and the audience would still have been in thrall, such was the strength of his acting. While his character was suitably lean and worn-out, even Henry’s supporting cast struggled to keep up with his pace.

Henry’s successful performance was, oddly, occasionally to the detriment of the play in the moments he was offstage. His wife Rose (Tanya Moodie) and son Cory (Ashley Zhangazha) when supported by Henry’s presence, interacted and performed well, but when left alone onstage the play lost vigour. The scenes without Henry felt as though an interlude, before the reappearance of the main act.

No matter: an exhausting monologue or epic ‘slanging match’ was never far away. Henry swaggered and gyrated through bawdy dialogue; screamed and howled in an almost primal, manner at times of high drama, reminding me of Othello; and became recognisable again as a larger-than-life comedian throughout his comic patter with pal Jim Bono (Colin McFarlane).

Doubtless some members of the audience were there just to see Lenny Henry; to see the comedian in action, perhaps hoping for some of his Tiswas antics, or a theatrical stand-up comedy routine. Many more superb performances such as this will surely erase these preconceptions and establish Henry in the acting circuit.

On the particular night I saw the play, there was a post-show discussion with the small cast. For a CAS student like me: a treat indeed. Discussions focusing on, amongst other things, the richness of Wilson’s text and the exhausting nature of touring, added to the connection between the audience and the cast. ‘King Henry’, naturally, held court. He joked with the audience, yet made clear his determination to be considered a serious actor.
Fortunately for him, my appraisal is that Lenny Henry is not just a serious actor. He’s a seriously good one too.

Fences is a Theatre Royal Bath production. Although it is at the end of its UK tour, it will be playing at the Duchess Theatre, London from 26th June to 14th September.