Denzel Washington and Viola Davis Tear Down Fences on Broadway

Time is running out to check out Denzel Washington’s powerful performance in the hit revival of Fences.

His acclaimed role as patriarch Troy, in the first Broadway revival of August Wilson’s classic drama, has earned him amazing critical raves, sold-out performances, and a prestigious Tony Award for Best Actor in a Drama. Fences is running at the Cort Theater until July 11.

After a five-year lapse from the New York theater, the two-time Oscar winner (Glory and Training Day) and New York metro area native has returned triumphantly to the stage. Now, its under the direction of Kenny Leon, who won acclaim bringing Sean Combs to Broadway in the Tony winning revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun. Leon, now Broadway’s leading African-American director, was mentored by both Wilson and Lloyd Richards, Wilson’s longtime director who headed Yale University’s drama school and directed the original production of “Raisin in the Sun.” Leon, the director of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” of plays at the Kennedy Center, had been nominated for Tony Awards for August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean” and “Radio Golf.” Through his brilliant production of “Fences,” the play picked up a coveted Tony Award for “Best Play Revival.”
Weeks before the star-studded opening of “Fences,” I found myself sitting at a roundtable interview at Sardi’s Restaurant with Washington and the cast. It gave me flashbacks to attending a special 1987 press dinner with August Wilson, James Earl Jones, director Lloyd Richards and the original cast of “Fences” at the Alconquin Hotel, another legendary theater gathering space.

I had covered Washington during his New York Off-Broadway theater days at the Negro Ensemble Company and Woodie King’s New Federal Theater. Back in the late 70′s and early 80′s, Washington was considered a major New York theater actor. He was a leading actor in high profile Off -Broadway productions like his Obie Award -winning performance in the Negro Ensemble Company production of Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play, which earned a Pulitzer Prize (he revived his role on film in “A Soldier’s Story”). Portraying Malcolm X in Laurence Holder’s “When The Chickens Come Home to Roost,” produced by Woodie King, mesmerized audiences, including a young Spike Lee, who later cast Washington in his Oscar-nominated role of Malcolm X.

Yet his Broadway turns in the Ron Milner-Woodie King production of “Checkmates” and later in the drama “Julius Caesar” received little accolades.

The idea to come back to the New York stage began when Hollywood producer Scott Rudin brought Washington a screenplay of “Fences” and tried to persuade him to make the film. Instead, it compelled Washington to read August Wilson’s play.

“I went and read the play and cried. Then laughed. It’s a great, great, great, great play,” recalled Washington, casually dressed in jeans and a tee shirt and still strikingly handsome in his fifties.

“Very rarely to you get to work and interpret the work of a master. A grand master. And August Wilson is one. He is Eugene O’Neill. He is Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. It’s a masterpiece,” Washington stated. “I’ve been around. I’ve read a lot of plays and screenplays. “Knowing he’s gone and I fortunately got a chance to meet him. You can feel him. His plays are spiritual.”

The international movie star likes his new role being back on the New York stage. “What I love about theater and what I love about it now, given the position that I’m in, is that it gives me a chance to be one of the guys,” he stressed. “I’m another member of the cast. I have a role to play. This is what I love.”

“This is how I started as an actor in the theater right up the block at Lincoln Center,” he explained. “When I left New York in 1982, I was doing a Pulitzer Prize winning play. I had just done When The Chickens Come Home to Roost and followed that up with A Soldier’s Play, which won a Pulitzer Prize. I left to go to LA to do what I thought was a 13-week job called St. Elsewhere. Four kids and 25 years whatever years later, I started working my way back. I never really felt that LA was my home. New York is my home. Now we have a home here.”

Although at 55, he is a similar age to James Earl Jones, when Jones created Troy on Broadway, Washington brings a different type of theatrical magnetism to the role.
“They are specific about this African American family, but the themes are universal. The husband and wife relationship, the bitterness of the husband about not being successful in life, dreams deferred, and the father and son relationship,” said Washington. “All of those themes-black, white, blue, green and yellow-we all relate to them.”
Viola Davis, who portrays wife Rose, was undeterred about possible comparisons with actress Mary Alice, who was in the original production. Davis is a Broadway star and August Wilson favorite. She won a Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Wilson’s King Hedley II and grabbed Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for his drama Seven Guitars.

“It’s always easier when people have no expectations, because then you are always going to be surprised,” said Davis, who believes the audience has to be open. “You have to come with a blank slate and then you have to allow whatever the actors are doing to infuse you, to move you.”
The Julliard trained actress has been appearing in TV and films since 1996. She’s been featured in director’s Steven Soderberg’s Traffic and Syriana and Jim Sheridan’s Get Rich or Die Tryin.’ Also, she’s been popular with Black directors like Denzel Washington’s Antoine Fisher, George Wolfe’s Nights in Rodanthe and Debbie Allen’s Lifetime film The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life is Not a Fairy Tale.
Yet, it was her heartbreaking performance in the film Doubt as the mother of the lone African American child in a strict Catholic school in the sixties that earned her national acclaim. The scene stealing performance with Meryl Streep scooped up Oscar, Golden Globe, SAG and Critics Choice Awards nominations. Audiences can currently see her on HBO’s United States of Tara and the Tom Cruise movie Knight and Day. This summer, she plays Julia Roberts’ best friend in the highly awaited Eat Pray Love.
Returning to the work of August Wilson and creating such a poignant performance as Rose in Fences has won the actress raves and another Tony Award. “We all have a little Wilsonisque in us,” explained Davis. “Because it’s our experience. It an African-American experience. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers our grandparents.”

On The Aisle – 2009: A Year in Review in Black Theater

2009 was an absolutely phenomenal year for Blacks in theater from off-Broadway to Broadway. If you came by the way of Brooklyn, you got to enjoy the magnificent writing of Jackie Alexander, as the Billie Holiday Theatre presented, The High Priestess of Dark Alley with an all-Black cast. A superb production of The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson played at the Public Theatre. It featured a mixed cast which was very talented. It was like watching an expose’ on how the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan worked against Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement down South.
A show that features another mixed cast is on Broadway and is going strong at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, that show is HAIR and it is definitely worth experiencing. When you walk in the theatre and take a seat you are made a part of the Tribe of hippies who believe in free love, flowing drugs and long hair. This show is a blast! Although the show has since closed, the revival of Guys and Dolls on Broadway that starred Titus Burgess in the role of Nicely Nicely Johnson was a pleasure to watch. Burgess rocked the house when he did the character’s signature number “You’re Rocking The Boat.”
When you go to the theater it is truly a gift when you get to see a dramatic production that teaches you about an injustice that Black people have suffered. It shares their trials, but also the fact that they managed to survive. That is the kind of inspiration and heartfelt message that came across to audiences as they were stunned and captivated, while watching Ruined, a drama by Lynn Nottage that played at the New York City Center.  The play shared the true stories of women who had been victimized by soldiers in war torn Democratic Republic of Congo. As you walked around the theatre pictures of actual women Nottage interviewed were displayed on the walls. The play also got Nottage her due, as she received the Pulitzer Prize for it in 2009.
On the lighter side of entertainment, audiences were almost falling out of their chairs onto the floor of the Beacon Theatre when Tyler Perry’s The Marriage Counselor was performed. Perry just has a way with words that make them so down to earth, but hilarious at the same time. The characters he creates remind one of someone you might actually know. His stories are hilarious, but also always have a bit of a religious aspect to them. The marriage counselor’s story reminds one of the expression “physician heal thyself.” It was incredible to watch the revival of August Wilson’s drama Joe Turner’s Come And Gone at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway. It was presented by Lincoln Center and spotlighted the talents of a tremendous, mainly Black cast. In fact, Roger Robinson won the Tony this year for his role.
Tony Award-winner Phylicia Rashad returned to Broadway as Violet Weston in Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play August Osage County. The comedy/drama played at the Music Box Theatre, and looked at the dysfunctional life of a pill-popping, sharp-tongued mother of three.
Some wonderful shows that had a limited life were Pure Confidence and a revival of The Wiz. Both these shows were wonderful. The first looked at the life story of a slave, who was also a jockey and won races easily. The other production gave Ashanti Singer her chance to debut on stage and it was a magnificent show.
A milestone was reached withDavid Lamb’s Platanos & Collard Greens as it celebrated its sixth year at the Florence Guild Hall on 59th St. The funny production looks at relationships between Blacks and Latinos and discloses stereotypes they have about each other.
Roger Guenvere Smith performed his one-man Frederick Douglass Now at the Irish Arts Center. The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center premiered Broke-ology, a play by African-American playwright Nathan Louis Jackson. The drama featured an all-Black cast and showed how two brothers struggled over the decision of how to take care of an ill father. FELA! made its explosive Broadway debut and celebrates the life, music and political struggles of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the father of the Afrobeat. This musical is at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre at W. 49th St.
Some other wonderful shows that happened in 2009 was Sing Harlem Sing at the Dempsey Theatre on W. 127th St. There was River Crosses Rivers-Short Plays by Women of Color at the Castillo Theatre and was presented by New Federal Theatre. It featured plays by Lynn Nottage, Ruby Dee, P.J. Gibson, Naveen Bahar Choudhury, Cori Thomas and Bridgette Wimberly. A new original Broadway musical is Memphis at the Shubert Theatre on W 44th St.  Dreamgirls came to the Apollo Theatre before going on tour. Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy made its New York premiere and it was moving to watch. A comedy/drama, Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts played at the Music Box Theatre and served as the Broadway debut vehicle for young African-American actor Jon Michael Hill. Finian’s Rainbow opened on Broadway and is still playing featuring Chuck Cooper. Ragtime has been revived and is being brilliantly presented at the Neil Simon Theatre.
In 2010, let me just mention some of the names that will be on Broadway, Denzel Washington, Vanessa Williams, Norm Lewis, Ron Cephas Jones and Antony Mackie.