Intermission Talk

Look Behind “Fences”

With Lloyd Richards

by Tony Vellela

“The misconception about this character is the one you feel when you’re walking down the street, alone, in the middle of the night, and see a figure coming toward you, who turns out to be a black person, a black man. That moment, and the next few moments, are what it’s about.” The speaker is the late director Lloyd Richards. The character is Troy Maxson, from August Wilson’s “Fences.”

I spent several afternoons talking with Lloyd during the years before he passed away on June 29, 2006, his 87th birthday. And now that the current revival of this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama has officially won a fistful of Tony Awards, giving it the added boost to its marquee star power in having Denzel Washington play and garner a Tony Award as Troy, Lloyd’s observations recall some of the initial views he held, as its premier director in 1988.

“This play takes place in 1957, in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. I did not know it existed until I worked on this play,” he told me, and since I’d also visited the Hill, we shared memories of the small wood frame houses with front porches and back yards, dirt alleys and Mom and Pop stores that still define the neighborhood. “Troy’s major wish for his life was to play in the big leagues of baseball, but he never made it. He believes that racism is the reason. His wife points out that, because he was forty when he tried out, he was too old. Probably some of both. He did play in the Negro leagues, but was never invited to the national leagues. He could never understand why Jackie Robinson was selected and he wasn’t. It enraged him. And, he had been in jail. Who wasn’t? No major offense. He didn’t kill anybody. But he did his time.”

The luminous Viola Davis plays Troy’s wife Rose, another Tony winner for this role. “Rose saw in Troy – possibility – a possibility for being an extraordinary person in terms of what he had to contribute to life.” She sees more than the man who walks behind a garbage truck every working day. “She is the most precious thing he has ever had. He’s had a lot of women, but she was different, very different. She stood out from the women who hung out after the baseball games who had a good dinner waiting for you if only you went home with them. Rose was special because she gave of herself in a special way.”

His best friend and co-worker Bono, played by the remarkable Stephen McKinley Henderson, unjustly bypassed by the Tony Awards judges, met Troy in prison, and sees the humor behind Troy’s often aggressive, gruff demeanor. He protects, in some way, Troy when he steps over the line or even disciplines him. Bono, like Rose, values Troy as a story-teller. That’s what happens to people who don’t read that much, who don’t have library access. Maybe they never went to school, were never taught to read, never took the time. So they learned to read the things that were important – ‘Checks Cashed’ – like that. You learn what a red light is, what a green light is, and that that sign says ‘Welcome,’ but it doesn’t mean it.”

Richards first burst onto the national theatrical scene in 1959, when he became the first African-American director to helm a Broadway play, Lorraine Hansberry’s classic “A Raisin in the Sun.” He went on to work with Wilson several times, starting when the young poet was accepted at the Yale School of Drama, where Richards was Executive Director. The two men became friends as well as collaborators. He considered the character of Troy, first played by James Earl Jones, one of the most interesting and complex he ever encountered. “Troy contained a great deal of rage, as do many black people who grew up under the imposition of the rules of segregation.” In “Fences,” Troy questions the city’s policy of having only black men on the street crew and only white men as drivers. And despite all his short-comings [reading challenged, no driver’s license], he becomes the first black driver on the sanitation patrols.

“Fences” follows the lives of a few people in Troy’s orbit, as he marauds through their needs and gifts, lifting them up and trampling them at will. “Troy is a man with tremendous physical stature,” Richards continued. “What he did with that physical stature, a large person like that can be, has a potential for violence, and you can sense it and see it in them. But they also have that potential for extraordinary violence. His large hands were used in ways that could make someone feel very good when they were touched by Troy. That strength attracted, excited or frightened people. This was a man who unsuccessfully deals with barriers, with fences. They were meant to keep him out, and they were successful.” As Troy tries to finish building his own real fence at the back of his yard, and as his son pulls away from helping him, his attitude toward obstacles contrasts markedly with that of Rose. At the start of scene two, she is dutifully hanging clothes from the line, and sings to herself “Jesus, be a fence around me every day.”

The core of this tale lies in a corroded father-son relationship, as Troy tries to dissuade his teen-aged son from becoming caught up in the chance to attend college on a football scholarship. Even when one is offered, the parent refuses to sign the consent forms that would free the child to craft his own future. “Troy was not exposed to a father. Troy loves his son, but love has many ways of manifesting itself. He was never trained to have a son. He is not a father who can say to a son, ‘I love you.’ The training he has is that he will bounce him around, give him a whack, and let him fend for himself.”

Richards recalled this directing experience with great joy, especially the Sunday afternoon audiences. “That’s when so many black people go to the theatre. They couldn’t go during the week, because they had to get up early in the morning. So they are usually coming from church. Jimmy [James Earl Jones] was very upset when some audience members erupted when Troy came into the back yard holding the baby his mistress Alberta had. One man jumped up and said ‘That’s me! That’s me!’ But there were Rose lovers, who were in support of her, enduring all she did to keep her marriage and family together. And there were Alberta lovers, rooting for this woman who did not have a husband, had an out-of-wedlock child, and died in the process. Overall, it made people feel that they were part of the culture that they were seeing in the play.”

Details, specific moments, well-timed beats, deep understanding of each character’s emotional and physical life, plus an original jazz/blues score by Branford Marsalis, all combine to make this current production sublimely memorable. [Note the rusted window screens on the bedroom windows.] Director Kenny Leon has carried on the glory of Lloyd Richards’ landmark production, and one can only hope that some entity such as HBO takes the star power, the awards creds and the long-overdue timing to turn this production into the great film it can be.

On Book

One of America’s greatest playwrights, August Wilson the writer and the man, can be explored in two fascinating books. Mary L. Bogumil’s “Understanding August Wilson” digs deep into five of his legendary ten-play cycle, and she includes “Fences” in that line-up. In “I Ain’t Sorry For Nothin’ I Done – August Wilson’s Process of Playwriting,” Joan Herrington digs into how he created many of his striking, historic works. And before or after you get yourself up/down/over to the Cort Theatre, read this play. The language sings itself into your brain. It’s not a very happy song, overall, but it’s a hit.

Now – the Summer. Why not select a few reading list titles that take place when the livin’ is easy? What, you say?

Well, yeah, ‘Porgy and Bess,’ to be sure. And while we’re in the South, spend some quality time with Tennessee Williams. Both “Summer and Smoke” and “Suddenly, Last Summer” will serve up a fair share of chills to cool you down. Even his “Spring Storm” will take your mind off the humidity.

The temperatures rise as political wills clash in Lanford Wilson’s skillful “Fifth of July.” And for the mother lode of personal clashes, there’s nothing more red hot than Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County.” You could spend that whole month chewing over this one.

A small town in Kansas in the early ’50s can be quite a steamy place. As summer gets ready to bow out, the annual Labor Day “Picnic” that William Inge created provides the catalyst for that steam to burst through the surface and scald everyone in its proximity. Years later, Inge rewrote his play, calling it “Summer Brave.” He chose the new title from a line in a Shakespeare poem, “Age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave.” If you read both versions, you can see that # 2 ratchets up the humor, but retains the pathos, heartbreak and lust that made “Picnic” the classic it is.

And speaking of the Bard, take a merry romp once again into the comfortably languid, shamelessly ingenuous “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Allow yourself to laugh out loud.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS documentary series “Character Studies” about great contemporary theatre classics. He haw written several plays and musicals, including is political drama “Admissions,” published by Playscripts, which was awarded Best Play at the New York International Fringe Festival. He has covered theatre for many years, for dozens of major publications. He teaches at the legendary HB Studio in the Village, and also conducts coaching sessions.

Collected Stories, La Cage aux Folles,

Promises, Promises,

The Addams Family and a truly Great Master, Monet

by Tony Vellela

Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan, at a time when they were not speaking to each other, both told me the same thing: 75% of whether a production will succeed depends on casting. Now, I’ve heard the same sentiment attributed to others, and it’s possible that neither of these theatre giants came up with these wise words on their own. But there it is, and currently on the Great White Way eight times a week, the truth of those words can be clearly seen.

On the positive side, Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” glows and bristles in all the right places because Linda Lavin knows what to do and how to do it, to make her character work. On the negative side, Kelsey Grammer in “La Cage Aux Folles,” and Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenowith in “Promises, Promises,” (for different reasons), manage to steer those revivals off-course, altering the charm that their characters, as written, possess.

Ruth Steiner, in the Margulies play, has convinced herself that the life she has constructed, as a successful and highly-regarded short story writer, and NYU professor, provides all she needs. Year after year, she chooses a student to work as her assistant, handling scheduling, some household chores, and basic secretarial tasks. When we first meet her, she is just choosing a student whose class compositions show promise and insight. Lisa, as performed unremarkably by Sarah Paulson, toadies her way into Ruth’s life, evolving from the bumbling heroine-worshipper to the heiress-apparent. She finally publishes a first novel, in which she appears to have leeched, and barely disguised, basic circumstances of the youthful history and unresolved emotions of her trusting mentor. Lisa parrots back what Ruth taught her, that a good writer must write about a subject that moves her, and that she must give expression to the circumstances of those with no voice. Ruth points out that, not only is Ruth a person WITH a voice, a writer, but that Lisa’s ‘subject’ is in fact Ruth’s life. “You have stolen my life!” Ruth says, when all the chips are finally on the table. And like the professor in David Mamet’s hopelessly flawed “Oleanna,” or John Proctor in Miller’s brilliant “The Crucible,” Ruth wants the destiny of her identity left to her alone.

Margulies is a master weaver of lives, which are set in fairly conventional situations. When this play was first produced off-Broadway, with the legendary Uta Hagen as Ruth, the tale had a different resonance, as Hagen depicted Ruth with an already-hardened vision of the rest of her life, and a settled reconciliation with the decisions that she made. That was a defensible interpretation. With Lavin, this Ruth can be seen as having real regret when she confesses that she wishes that she had found a man who met her standards, to father children for her. Lavin’s work, together with Margulies’ craft, makes “Collected Stories” a rewarding, gratifying theatrical experience. Do not miss it.

You can certainly miss “Promises, Promises,” a sixties musical from Neil Simon [book], Burt Bacharach [music] and Hal David [lyrics], based on the screenplay for the 1960 multi-Oscar winner “The Apartment.” That Best Picture picture effervesced with wit, winking at the ‘boys will be boys’ prevailing attitude on Mad Ave. Men’s working-late liaisons. Billy Wilder and his longtime writing partner I. A. L. Diamond, concocted the premise: an enterprising, single, eager beaver (Chuck) uses his most valuable resource, a studio apartment he makes available for his various bosses to use when the wild calls, to enhance his career prospects. When he discovers that the company cafeteria waitress he’s been pining for (Fran), has been warming his very sheets with his very boss, clashes of conscience, sentiment and cynicism circle around him like vultures in a Peckinpah pic. So, okay – the picture had Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and the Wilder directorial golden touch. Why describe the movie in such detail? Because it was a true product of its time, an era when sex, unlike little children a hundred years earlier, was not seen but was heard about. It was 1960.

The original musical premiered on December 1, 1968, and took place in that year. Result? Bacharach’s score echoed what was on the radio. Michael Bennett’s choreography featured the all-elbows-flapping, all-knees-jerking style that filled nightclubs and frat houses. And everybody loved it, including me.

Revive it? Why? Another casualty of the rush to mimic the “Mad Men” craze? The original musical starred the youngish Jerry Orbach and the even younger Jill O’Hara [Google for credits], and both the musical and the movie relied on having the sorta nebbish-y Chuck rescue the kinda vulnerable Fran from her battered emotions. Sean Hayes just doesn’t measure up to the vocal demands of this show [Orbach, remember, had already created the El Gallo role in “The Fantasticks,” starred in “Threepenny Opera,” was … well, he was a singer]. And O’Hara could become the confused, hapless girl-kid who needed a strong hand to keep her from falling on her face, or into bed. Despite all her tremendous gifts, vulnerability is not something Chenowith projects. She may be considered this generation’s Ethel Merman – another Broadway powerhouse never known for portraying vulnerable women. So the balance is off – kinda sorta backwards. [The only redeeming element is the ten or twelve minutes when Katie Finneran as a booze-bolstered pick-up channels a sober Joan Cusack character in two hilarious scene-ettes.] To put it another way – this show is 2010’s “Bye, Bye, Birdie” revival.

Paring down and tarting up “La Cage aux Folles” was/is a refreshing idea. We get to see the real seediness that makes this transvestite nightclub such a threat to conservative ‘family values’ types in the south of France, circa 1970s. This concept was imported from London’s daring Menier Chocolate Factory, and stars Douglas Hodge as Albin, stage name Zaza, the ‘female’ half of the performing team that have been together for decades. They have even raised the son of ‘butch’ partner Georges’ once-only hetero romp twenty years ago. Hodge shines. Sorry to say, Kelsey Grammer, as the manager-partner Georges, who runs their club, does not. Once again, casting someone whose name can be read in big letters on the marquee, but who cannot really sing, deflates some of the joy from this rollicking production.

This is a Jerry Herman show, [music & lyrics], and it is the show that he had, unknowingly I’ll venture, been auditioning for, for all the years that led up to it, with megahits such as “Mame” and “Hello, Dolly!” laying the foundation for story and songs. Zaza is Dolly is Mame. The club features a chorus of down-at-heel chorines in jocks and bangle beads, working as hard, and displaying as little talent, as the ladies in the Kit Kat Klub line. Candidates for a slot in RuPaul’s Drag Race they are not. The original show, in its 1983 world, memorialized the rapidly-growing numbers of AIDS victims, with its message of bold defiance of convention, intolerance and condescension. The Act One closer “I Am What I Am” still resonates as a bold, defiant Gay Rights anthem.

Grammer, like so many straight men playing gay roles, gives it 110% of the gossamer mannerisms, the light-in-the-loafers, heavy-lidded posturing that is akin to sober actors tripping over their shoelaces when playing drunks. And not even all the liquor in the La Cage club can keep you from realizing that off-key is off-key.

Overall, it is a production that creates new interpretations that liberate Harvey Fierstein’s fairly conventional libretto from the overdressed, spangles-on-steroids previous versions, and is a tribute to director Terry Johnson, who got little support in the way of avoiding the predictable from choreographer Lynn Page. It’s also another opportunity to see ravishing Christine Andreas, outrageous Robin de Jesus and enthralling Veanna Cox in supporting roles. And Hodge, in his less antic moments, when he is not channeling Dame Edna, displays a tender sweetness that reveals why Georges would have fallen in love with the high-spirited lad who dreamed of one day kicking up his heels, center stage.

In “La Cage,” Georges’ son wants to marry the daughter of an ultra right-wing pol, and invites them for a meet-and-greet dinner, that goes bad, then good. That same exact premise has been shamelessly appropriated by “The Addams Family.” There’s very little good to say about this box office blockbuster that boasts an advance on the strength of Nathan Lane’s rep, Bebe Neuwirth’s sheen and the ever-enduring attraction of the Charles Addams ghoulish cartoon family. If you’ve never seen Nathan, he once again unleashes those unruly eyebrows. Beyond that, it’s a train wreck in a blizzard at midnight. Put another way, it’s the 2010 version of “Young Frankenstein.”

Aside: great musicals can come from cartoon characters, such as “L’il Abner,” “Thurber Carnival,” “Annie,” and the perennial “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” All it takes is original thinking, and a dose of creativity.

And despite the unfortunate need by others to define her in terms of her father, sister and niece, the remarkable Lynn Redgrave, who passed away last week, was indeed a creative original. When we first met eighteen years ago, she was planning ways to celebrate turning fifty, eager to meet new challenges with verve and nerve. The years that followed would have defeated most others, but Lynn forged ahead. Along with her dazzling list of impressive credits [starting with her stunning performances early on, in the films “Georgy Girl” and “Smashing Time,” and up to recent roles, from the acerbic Joann at the Kennedy Center, in “Company” to the laconic housekeeper in the film “Gods and Monsters”], she launched into a new career, as a playwright. It started with “Shakespeare For My Father,” part tribute, part eulogy, for her dad Michael, patriarch of the royal Redgraves, Britain’s acting family version of our Barrymores. It was, she often said, an act of desperation, because she was not getting offered good roles, so she decided to write a part only she could play – herself. In recent days, many many people have also attested to Lynn’s ability to make you feel like you were a close friend, however infrequently you spent time together. Like all those others, I will miss her greatly.

If, like me, you have also not [yet] seen “Red,” consider spending a fascinating ninety minutes at the Gagosian Gallery to experience a once-only exhibition of a timeless master. Titled “Claude Monet: Late Work,” the gallery has gathered paintings and sketches from three continents to present this moving homage, that combines priceless examples from two periods from his later life, the first as he was rendering fine, delicate depictions at the dawn of the last century, and the second from his post-1914 period, as he moved into a more bold, assertive style.

While each painting can stand alone in its beauty, the gallery has painstakingly assembled and displayed together, those that belong to a series of evolving visions, adjusted perspectives and changing conditions. Examples of the evolution of creative genius from both periods grip one’s imagination and attest to the brilliance of Monet’s iconoclastic vitality. Two of his most beloved subjects, the lily pond and the Japanese bridge, both of which he installed on his country estate in Giverny, France, reveal how perceptions are ‘colored’ by so many elements that remain largely esoteric even to ourselves. The gallery, at 522 west 21st street, is open to the public, for free. Details are available at www.gagosian.com.

One of the most memorable paintings is “L’All ee de Rosiers,” 1920-22, on loan from the Musee Marmatton Monet, Paris, which pulls you in to a child’s secret tunnel of overhanging blossoms, but makes no promise that you will find your way out again. And from time to time, don’t we all want to get lost in such a world, almost hoping we won’t ever escape?

On Book

Lynn Redgrave’s two stunning plays based in part on her life, “Shakespeare for My Father,” (acting edition, $8.95) and “Nightingale,” offer excellent examples of how a solo show for a woman of a certain age can be compelling, challenging and inspiring. And to learn some of what she learned from her legendary dad, there’s “The Actor’s Ways and Means,” by Sir Michael Redgrave.

With a foreword by John Lahr and a preface by Martin Scorsese, “Kazan on Directing” pulls back the asbestos curtain to reveal how the Great Gadg delivered some of the American theatre’s greatest works, honoring the intentions [for the most part] of the mid twentieth century’s most significant playwrights – Miller, Williams, Inge. Editor Robert Cornfield collected script notes, journal entries, commentaries to writers and others, and letter excerpts, to make this a fascinating study of his creative mind, at work, at play, and all too often, at war with itself.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre “Character Studies.” His award-winning play “Admissions,” produced three times in New York, all directed by Austin Pendleton, is published by Playscripts. He has also written several other plays and musicals, three books, teaches at HB Studio, and conducts private coaching sessions. His documentary “Test of Time” was a CableAce Award-winner.