Power went out, but 'Fences' still proved powerful

ST. PETERSBURG — I don't usually cry at the theater. It's not my style, plus I see a lot of plays. Yet there I was Sunday afternoon, tears rolling down my face at the end of Fences at American Stage.

Yes, August Wilson's melodrama about Troy Maxson, an old Negro League ballplayer turned garbage collector, is powerful stuff, but what made my emotional response to it even more surprising was that the Sunday matinee had been almost ruined by a series of power shutdowns. At least five times during the performance the theater was briefly plunged into darkness before the lights came back on. (A spokesman for the theater said much of downtown St. Petersburg experienced power outages Sunday. Doesn't the building have a backup generator?)

In front of a full house, the cast members demonstrated amazing grace under pressure, halting in their tracks whenever the lights went out, then resuming the show when it was possible to continue. Nobody dropped a line or slipped out of character. You could not have blamed the actors if they had gotten fed up and left the stage. Their committed performance under such trying circumstances was as impressive as anything I've seen in the theater.

I'm still not sure why I was so moved by Fences, stylishly directed by Timothy Douglas. It is in some ways one of Wilson's lesser plays, more commercial potboiler than deeply felt work of art, but there are scenes between Troy, his wife, children and best friend that have the weight of Shakespearean tragedy.

Evander Duck Jr. gives a riveting performance as Troy, swinging from the garrulous charm of a natural-born storyteller to the resentful rage of a black slugger born "too early" to benefit from the desegregation of Major League Baseball to a fierce kind of shaman doing a soliloquy to "Mr. Death." Troy is an enormous, complex role, and the bearded, barrel-chested Duck inhabits it completely.

Revolving around Duck's Troy is a constellation of superb actors, including Kim Sullivan as the garbageman's best friend, Jim Bono, and Jayne Trinette as Troy's wife, Rose. These two represent a moral rebuke to the flawed Troy. Bono vanishes for most of Act 2, leaving Troy alone with the consequences of his transgression. Trinette's delivery of Rose's defense of her marriage ("It was my choice") is an astonishing tour de force. Ron Bobb-Semple is overwhelming as Troy's brain-damaged brother, Gabriel, a tortured angel with a bugle hanging from his belt.

Fences is finally about a father and his children. The scenes between Troy and his oldest son, Lyons (Reginald Kent Robinson Jr.), a musician in a snappy fedora, are hilarious. Lyons knows how to handle his dad, but Troy's younger son, Cory (Travus Leroux), is fighting to get out from under the patriarch's heavy grip. Only when Troy's late-in-life baby girl, Raynell (Trinity Edwards), comes along does the pressure let up, and he sings a lovely little lullaby to her on the porch.

I wish the performance of Fences I saw hadn't been messed up by the power outages, and I look forward to seeing it again, uninterrupted. But sometimes handicaps bring out the best in artists, and that was definitely the case Sunday.

John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716. He blogs on Critics Circle at blogs.tampabay.com/arts.