The Nottingham Playhouse are hosting a brand new production of Pulitzer Prize winning 1985 play Fences. It's on for two more days. Here's what our reviewer Sam Harvey thought about it...
There is something uniquely powerful about seeing Fences performed on stage. While the acclaimed 2016 film brought audiences uncomfortably close to the raw emotions depicted on screen, this production allows the pressure inside the Maxson household to build in real time.
August Wilson’s original play already feels richly detailed on the page, but live performance gives its long conversations room to breathe, drawing us into a family gradually being pulled apart by the things left unsaid. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, the story follows former baseball player Troy Maxson, whose talent was denied the opportunities it deserved by racism. He now collects rubbish and spends his evenings holding court in his back garden. Charismatic (almost charming), funny and fiercely proud, Troy is also trapped by his bitterness, unable to recognise that the world may offer his son Cory possibilities that were never available to him.
Ray Fearon has an amazing presence as Troy, commanding the stage from the moment he appears. His chemistry with every member of the cast is superb, but what makes the performance particularly powerful is how those relationships change. The warmth, humour and easy physicality of act one gradually give way to distance and confrontation in act two in particular his relationship with his wife, Rose. Fearon never asks us to excuse Troy’s actions, but he ensures we understand the scars and disappointments behind them.
Madeline Appiah is equally exceptional as Rose. Her powerful second-half monologue is the emotional high point of the evening, delivered with such anger, heartbreak and accumulated frustration that the atmosphere inside the theatre seems to shift. Rose has spent years creating a home around Troy’s ambitions and failures; when she finally explains what that sacrifice has cost her, Appiah gives every word devastating weight and despite all of it- she is still the rock that grounds all of the characters.
There is excellent support from Josh Tedeku as Cory and Everal A Walsh as Troy’s friend Jim Bono. Having last reviewed Walsh as Old Major in Animal Farm, it is clear he has a knack for playing characters capable of imparting much-needed wisdom to protagonists (whether they actually listen to that advice clearly varies between plays)!
The set is also hugely impressive. For a play unfolding in one location, recreating the exterior of the Maxson home, complete with back garden, gives the production a remarkable sense of scale and authenticity. The unfinished fence running off to the side becomes more than a household job: it represents protection, division and the emotional barriers separating the family, and the tethered baseball hanging from the tree serves to remind the audience and Troy of the regret and unrealised potential which underpins the entire show.
Fences tackles generational trauma, racism and the fear of never reaching your potential without reducing them to simple talking points. Troy has been wounded by the world, yet Wilson asks whether that pain must inevitably be passed down. The result is a production filled with humour and humanity, but also one that lands with tremendous emotional force.
Fences runs until Saturday 14 November 2026 at the Nottingham Playhouse
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