THEATER REVIEWS : Long Beach Builds Solid, Handsome ‘Fences’

Ever fond of easy categories, theater critics often pigeonhole August Wilson as a naturalistic chronicler of black American life. Yet, as this new production of his 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winner “Fences” makes clear, Wilson at his best takes on a number of issues besides race. At the heart of this quiet tragedy about the fall of an aging baseball player lies a complex look at what it means to be a man--black or white--in America.

Director Bill DeLuca’s staging at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre provides a solid interpretation of the text. Its key advantage is actor Billy Mayo, who captures both the raw fury and hidden pathos of the problematic hero, Troy Maxson.

Part of Wilson’s ambitious cycle of plays set in each decade of this century, “Fences” opens in 1957, the same year President Eisenhower dispatched troops to ensure school desegregation in Little Rock. While the play does not dwell on the burgeoning civil rights movement, it is suffused with the spirit of those times.

The fiftysomething Maxson, once a promising player in the all-black leagues, knows that racism played a role in keeping him out of the majors. He has subverted his bitterness into a campaign to pressure his bosses to promote him from sanitation worker to truck driver.

It soon becomes apparent that there is even more at stake than the tragedy of his athletic career. Plagued by bad choices and worse luck--not to mention poverty and a prison record--this tormented man allows his disappointment with life to consume him.

Ironically, his buried need for affection is the very thing that compels him to cheat on his long-suffering wife Rose (a gloriously tough and nonchalant Robyn Hastings) and to brutalize his teen-age son Cory (Kyle Jones).

The Maxsons live in the sort of hardscrabble urban neighborhood whose residents work hard but have little to show for it. In Stewart Christie’s fine set design, the front yard of a clapboard bungalow is a comfortable, slightly shabby place, strewn with the planks and sawhorses used to cobble together a rickety picket fence.

The chore seems to take Maxson years to complete; it becomes Wilson’s none-too-subtle symbol of the character’s creeping emotional isolation.

DeLuca and cast can do little to fence in the occasional windy or repetitive lapses in Wilson’s writing. Yet clear, honest performances propel the show at every turn.

Though too young for the part, Mayo brings off a delicate balancing act, conveying all of Maxson’s blustering rage against life (and death) while also suggesting his heartbreaking vulnerability.

This vexing character--who trades such easy bonhomie with pal Bono (Wichita Troublefield) yet who moments later can become a vein-popping monster when confronting his own son--finds fit expression in this handsome and frequently moving production.

* “Fences,” the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 15. $10. (310) 494-1616. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.