FENCES

“Don’t strike out” warns Laurence Fishburne repeatedly in August Wilson’s FENCES at the Pasadena Playhouse, the bases loaded with a cast including movie stars Mr. Fishburne, Angela Bassett, and a Pulitzer Prize winning play one would expect a grand slam, it’s not a strike out but we get a bunt.

This production feels trapped within the very fences that it’s characters are never able to overcome. Misdirected by Sheldon Epps, never delving deeper than surface scratching, it turns this powerful drama into a mello-dramatic soap opera. Mr. Epps’ staging is so unfocused it spills over into the acting in which everyone seems in different plays. It just seems Mr. Epps doesn’t know what the play is actually about. Every moment is on the same level and when characters deliver soliloquies his staging doesn’t clarify the fluidity of the writing, they just seem crazy.

Laurence Fishburne gives a truly heartfelt performance with moments of pure human complexity, but it is diffused into the blandness of the whole. Angela Bassett seems lost, giving a performance of pure affectation. Her constant voice inflections and fake nervous laugh pretty much personify this production and it’s a damn shame given the stellar talent provided.
Both Wendell Pierce and Kadeem Hardison give wonderful rich life to August Wilson characters but they are not the lynch pin of the show.

Even the set looks fake, no one ever quite feels at home.

Filling the emotional void onstage, the audience responded as if they were at ’A Night At The Apollo’ whooping and hollering at the melodrama onstage.

Mr. . Wilson’s symbolic emotional family fence that holds each character back is ironically this production’s director. Mr. Epps never dared to tear down the fence and risk a grand slam, he just bunted, resting on the laurels of movie star status. Game over.