Emotion will bring tears to your eyes at the bravery of Celie, and women like her, in the face of adversity. The context, of course, is that these women whose grandparents were born into slavery are still living an oppressed existence dictated by their gender and their lack of economic power.
Director Paulette Randall has honed these real performances for this excellent production. By the end of the play we know each and every one of August Wilson’s characters. Wilson’s language is powerful and poetic. Libby Watson’s set is the spacious Pittsburgh house bought with brother Gabriel’s compensatory payment for his war wound and surrounded by greenery as well as the eponymous fences.
The scene goes back more than 30 years to London where the great Edmund Kean is ill having collapsed onstage and was due to play the role of Othello, the Moor at Covent Garden. Kean's son Charles (Ryan Kiggell) normally plays Iago and is ready to take the title role when Pierre Laporte (Eugene O'Hare), the manager says he has engaged another actor, an American who has had good reviews elsewhere. They are shocked when they discover that Ira Aldridge is a black actor, they had thought dark was an allusion to the style of the play. Set in the context of the debate on the abolition of slavery of 1833 in England and the colonies, Ira's casting prompts a vehement reaction.