It’s a sad truth that August Wilson died too young, expiring of liver cancer in 2005, when he was only 60. But it’s also true that Wilson lived long enough to create an important and enduring body of work.
In his 10-play cycle, each set in a different decade of the 20th century and all but one set in Pittsburgh, Wilson sought to confront the core issues of the African-American experience and to, as he once put it, “articulate the cultural response of black Americans to the world in which they found themselves.’’
The “Pittsburgh Cycle’’ established him as one of the most important playwrights of the past half-century - a status that is only confirmed by the outstanding new Huntington Theatre Company production of Wilson’s “Fences.’’ Director Kenny Leon again shows his affinity for Wilson’s work, eliciting electric performances from his cast.
At the heart of much of Wilson’s work is the impact of huge social forces on individual lives, and “Fences,’’ which is set in 1957, does grapple with the destructive effects of segregation. But it is also, like Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,’’ concerned with the ripple effect of huge familial forces - in other words, fathers - and the way their words and deeds can shape their sons. As the epigraph to the published version of his play, Wilson wrote: “When the sins of our fathers visit us/We do not have to play host. . .’’
Easier said than done, as this production of “Fences’’ shows.
Troy Maxson (John Beasley), the 53-year-old protagonist of “Fences,’’ is a force of nature. Think hurricane. Troy is a big man with big flaws and big appetites, a teller of tall tales and hard truths alike. He is building a fence for his wife, Rose (Crystal Fox), but he always has time to deliver an aphorism (“Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner’’) or take a few swings with a baseball bat at a bundle of rags dangling from a tree in his backyard.
Troy knows he got lucky in the woman he married: Rose is a steadying counterpoint to his volatility. But in other ways, Troy has been dealt a bad hand. He works as a garbage collector, but there was a time when he aspired to a lot more. He had been a top slugger in the Negro leagues in the 1940s, but in those years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, that was as far as a black ballplayer could go, no matter how talented. Troy lives with the bitter conviction that he could have been a star in the major leagues. “You just come along too early,’’ his friend Jim Bono tells him, to which Troy retorts: “There ought not never have been no time called too early!’’
Yet when a big chance materializes for his son Cory (Warner Miller), Troy squelches it. Cory tells Troy that a college football recruiter from North Carolina is interested in talking to him, but Troy refuses to give his permission. Furthermore, he tells the boy that his job at the A&P must take precedence over football. When Rose tells Troy that Cory is “just trying to be like you with the sports,’’ Troy replies furiously: “I don’t want him to be like me! I want him to move as far away from my life as he can get.’’
That will eventually happen, but not in the way or for the reasons that Troy imagines. Troy’s disappointments in life have left him with a permanently wounded self, and he will eventually inflict so many wounds on his wife and son that he will virtually tear his family apart. In this, he is in a sense reenacting the damage done to him by his own brutal father.
As Troy, Beasley commands the stage, creating a compelling portrait of Troy as a tragic figure who knows he is trapped, for all his blustering. As Rose, Fox is a quiet powerhouse. It is transfixing to watch the play of emotions across her face - rage, betrayal, devastation - when an earthquake suddenly erupts in what she thought was a solid marriage. As Cory, Miller convincingly makes the journey from callowness to maturity; you can almost see the steel developing in his spine.
Bill Nunn brings an eerie grace to the character of Gabriel, Troy’s brother, addled by a head injury in World War II. In the beautiful final scene of reconciliation, Gabriel turns out to have unexpected powers; thanks to him, the characters onstage are bathed in radiance. Thanks to August Wilson, the audience at “Fences’’ may feel the same way.
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com. 
