Pittsburgh lends veracity to ‘Fences’

By MARK KENNEDY

AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK

When August Wilson’s widow first toured the set for the new movie based on his play “Fences,” she carefully examined the modest two-story brick house, the small yard and the tree where a ball hung from a rope – and she wept.

Constanza Romero, who lost her playwright husband in 2005, has visited many theatrical sets for Wilson’s most popular and perhaps most personal play, but the one used for its first film adaptation reconnected her with him.

“It was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m inside August Wilson’s world. This is August Wilson’s world complete,’” Romero recalled. “It was just such a feeling that August’s words had become three-dimensional.”

Romero found herself in tears, trying to catch her breath, when she glanced at Denzel Washington, the film’s director and star. “Oh, I understand,” he told her. “I understand those tears.”

The tears were as much out of relief as gratitude. Adapting Wilson’s masterpiece has taken more than 30 years, and it’s easy to see why: It’s a two-hour, dialogue-heavy story rooted in a backyard in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

Washington, who won a Tony for his performance in the Broadway revival of “Fences” seven years ago, made some key decisions when he was first tapped to translate the play onto film.

First, he reunited five of the main actors from the Broadway revival – himself, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson. Then he added up-and-comers Jovan Adepo and Saniyya Sidney.

Then he put them in an actual yard in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. There would be no Hollywood sound stages this time. Just a worn, small home in the neighborhood where Wilson grew up.

“Once it was clear we were all getting that same band back together, with a couple of new hot players and a little different arrangement – and doing it in Pittsburgh – then I knew that there was no way it wasn’t destined to at least be respectful,” said Henderson.

It seems to have worked. Since opening wide on Christmas, the Paramount release has made $32.4 million, making it one of the more lucrative stage-to-screen adaptations in recent years.

“Fences,” set in 1957, tells the story of Troy Maxson, a larger-than-life garbage man whose dashed dream of baseball glory in a white world of pro ball has given him a rigid, embittered sense of responsibility that has a profound effect on his wife, Rose, and his sons.

Washington, who plays Maxson, had to tread carefully, respecting the play – and it’s stifling, claustrophobic quality – but also making it cinematic. He added short scenes like kids playing stickball in the street.