This week we head into our final performances of August Wilson’s Fences.
We are proud to be touring “an extraordinary production of a truly extraordinary play” (The Yorkshire Post). And that this production is getting an even better response from audiences than it is from critics.
If you’ve seen Fences we’d love to ask for your support in getting nominated for the WhatsOnStage Awards.
You can nominate the show for Best Revival. You can also nominate our tremendous cast in the Best Performer and Best Supporting Performer categories. And don’t forget Josh Tedeku as Cory, who is making his professional stage debut in our show.
We believe that August Wilson’s work deserves recognition at the highest level and we need your help to achieve that.
Nominate Fences for the WhatsOnStage Awards! Image: Tyler Fayose
About the production
It's easy to call a play timeless. But what makes Fences feel genuinely relevant to the here and now is its exploration of the inner workings of a blended family. Specifically one struggling in a world that’s designed to keep them down.
It's a play about generational inheritance; pride, fear, love, trauma. And the cost of having dreams that the playing field won’t allow you to realise.
“Generational harm is everywhere. Troy’s monstrous father implanted himself in his psyche; his own sons have dreams, but Troy continually diminishes them and their aspirations... Wilson continuously peels back painful layers in this brutal and often pitiless play, but Daniel Bailey directs with sensitivity, building the intensity with exquisite care.”
London Theatre
Questions of Black masculinity and fatherhood are central to Fences. But in this production, Daniel Bailey has also sharpened the focus on Rose, giving real weight to the woman holding the family together.
Where Troy offers rigidity, Rose’s quiet determination to love, nurture and hold hope, shows mothering as a defiant act of resistance.
“As Troy’s wife, Rose, Madeline Appiah is blisteringly good…, unleashing a righteous tidal wave of hurt and anger over the sacrifices she has made to fit into the role of his wife. Together, she and Fearon scorch the play’s emotional landscape.”
TimeOut
Music runs through this production.
Daniel’s vision places live blues and jazz, played by the company themselves, not as backdrop but as another language of resistance and joy in the play.
For Black communities in post-war America, music was a way to express what couldn't be said out loud; a means not of escape, but of transcending circumstances. On stage here, it plays the same role.
As well as showing generational shift, it also keeps hope and joy central in a story that holds its fair share of grief.
“Khalil Madovi’s jazz lending both authenticity to the world-building, but also a plaintive soundtrack to Troy’s life,”
Broadway World
More about August Wilson
Although August Wilson was of mixed heritage, he strongly identified as a Black man.
He reflected that being raised by an African American mother and socialised within Black communities shaped his sense of identity and belonging. He recognised that the social barriers and experiences faced by Black Americans were also his own:
“Whatever was closed to them was closed to me.”
For Wilson, writing was a spiritual art form.
The beauty of the blank page lay in the act of pouring words onto it and continually refining his craft. Music, particularly the blues and jazz, profoundly shaped his artistic vision, with John Coltrane’s improvisational style influencing his creative process.
He also believed that understanding personal and family histories, and maintaining a connection with previous generations, was essential to creating authentic stories.
“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.”
The Yorkshire Post
Taking on Fences
Fences is a big play. Both in reputation and legacy, but also the writing itself. Our cast of powerhouse performers are taking on what they themselves describe as a massive, muscular text, and it's genuinely thrilling to watch them do it.
“His (Wilson’s) Pulitzer prize-winning 1987 play has the gravitas of a marathon sporting event.”
The Stage
Our production of Wilson’s play Jitney in 2021/2022 laid the foundation for this outstanding version of Fences from Daniel Bailey.
For us at Headlong, Fences delivers on the promise we make to our audiences; bold theatre with the power to move; asking big questions about the world around us; touring to different places across the country.
August Wilson wrote his plays to centre the Black experience, and at a time when Black lives are still being pushed to the margins, in America and in our own backyards, we continue to tell that story.
A seminal modern classic. Too rarely performed in London, let alone outside the capital. Presented to audiences by this calibre of Director and company, on their own doorsteps… it feels like the ultimate Headlong show.
