Fences: Adapted from a Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play by August Wilson, Fences takes us to the home of Troy and Rose Maxson in Eisenhower-era Pittsburgh. Troy works hard every week and he won’t let anyone forget it. He’ll tell anyone who asks (and many who don’t) that he could’ve been a baseball star had the Majors allowed blacks in its lockers. He’s a good man—or so he tries to be. But he’s a bad man, too, burdened by his own past and corrupted by his own desires, suspicions and ambitions for his children. Featuring a pair of blistering, award-worthy performances by Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, Fences gets not just at the moral dichotomy in Troy, but perhaps that in us all—our desire to do what’s good and right, and the hurdles, often of our own making, that get in the way.
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