Fences at PTC

Tuesday night I went to Pioneer Theatre's critically acclaimed production of Fences, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by August Wilson.  As you may remember, I recently saw Denzel Washington's film adaptation and had a somewhat lukewarm reaction to it but that made me even more curious to see it on the stage.  Troy Maxson (Michael Anthony Williams) is a man with so many demons that he torments everyone around him:  his brother Gabriel (Jefferson A. Russell) who was injured in the war, his long-suffering wife Rose (Gayle Samuels), his friend Bono (Jeorge Bennett Watson), and his sons Lyons (Biko Eisen-Martin) and Cory (Jimmie "J.J." Jeter).  I still found the character of Troy to be incredibly flawed but Williams' portrayal was much more sympathetic, in my opinion.  Whereas Washington's version of Troy was always angry, I felt that Williams gave the character a certain vulnerability and his Troy was wounded rather than angry.  I think this story is much better suited to the immediacy and intimacy of the stage and this is especially true of the fence.  All of the action takes place in the yard which makes Troy's environment much more claustrophobic than in the film version.  In the final scenes, the stage is dominated by the fence with Troy inside the yard and all of the other characters on the other side.  It is extremely powerful and serves to highlight Troy's isolation.  I highly recommend this outstanding production which runs at PTC through January 21.  Tickets may be purchased here.

Bowling

Over the long weekend, Sean requested that we have an outing and he suggested bowling because that is the only sport that Marilyn can play (we laughed and laughed over that!).  So yesterday we convinced Tashena to join us and headed over to Orchard Lanes.  We got the two-hour unlimited pass and ended up playing four games!

Bowling is a lot of fun (I'm more noted for my power than my accuracy), especially with Sean and Tashena.  Sean is an absolute riot!  Tashena won the first game, Marilyn inexplicably won the second game, Tashena won the third game, and I won the fourth (I was just getting my mojo).  It was more fun than should be allowed on a Monday morning!

Hidden Figures

Last night my parents took me and my sister to see the movie Hidden Figures (we are reinstating movie night in the new year).  I suggested this particular movie because Octavia Spencer is getting a lot of Oscar buzz for her performance and, even though my parents weren't very enthusiastic, they ended up loving it as did I.  It is a feel-good movie that will have you cheering.  It tells the true story of Katherine Johnson (Teraji P. Henson),  Dorothy Vaughan (Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three brilliant African-American mathematicians working at NASA during the space race.  Johnson is asked to compute the trajectories for John Glenn's historic orbit around the earth and the crowd cheered out loud when Glenn (Glen Powell) rejects the numbers computed by the IBM and asks for the "girl" to check the figures before he will agree to the launch.  There is also an extremely powerful moment when the head of the Space Task Force (Kevin Costner) learns that Johnson has been walking to the colored bathroom, in another building quite a distance away, and then destroys the sign outside the colored bathroom declaring that everyone pees the same color at NASA.  Vaughan secretly learns how to program the new IBM (while the employees of IBM are unable to get it running) and eventually becomes the first African-American supervisor at NASA.  Another cheer-out-loud moment comes when Vaughan's supervisor (Kirsten Dunst) calls her Mrs. Vaughan rather than Dorothy.  Finally, Jackson is assigned to work with one of NASA's best engineers and, when he suggests that she become an engineer herself, she must fight to be allowed to attend an all-white school.  The crowd cheered again when she wins her court case.  All three women give very affecting performances (I actually had tears in my eyes several times) in an incredibly compelling story.  I loved it, my family loved it, and the audience, judging by the incredible applause at the end, loved it, too.  I highly recommend this inspiring movie!

Fences

On New Year's Eve I went to see Fences, an adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.  Troy Maxson (Washington) is a sanitation worker in 1950s Pittsburgh living with his wife Rose (Davis) and his son Cory (Jovan Adepo).  The fence he is perpetually building with his son becomes a metaphor for how trapped he feels and he lashes out against the people in his life.  Troy is a despicable character who does despicable things such as sabotaging his son's chance for a football scholarship because he is bitter about his own lost opportunity to play baseball, cheating on his wife and forcing her to take in his illegitimate daughter, and swindling his disabled brother (Mykelti Williamson) out of his war pension.  It was very difficult for me to watch Denzel Washington, an actor I have always liked and admired, play such an unsympathetic character but his performance is brilliant.  The same could be said of Viola Davis.  I had difficulty with her character, as well, because, although she confronts her husband about his behavior (in an incredibly powerful scene which, no doubt, secured her the Golden Globe), she becomes his apologist after his death.  In the end it is a movie about a flawed man who ultimately gets redemption for hurting the people in his life because he himself has been hurt.  I didn't like this resolution because, in my opinion, he doesn't deserve redemption.   Despite the lauded performances of Washington and Davis, it's not a movie I would recommend.

Hacksaw Ridge

Hacksaw Ridge is garnering a lot of attention for the outstanding performance of Andrew Garfield and Mel Gibson's direction so, of course, I wanted to see it.  This late in the run, it was only being screened at one theater late at night but it was definitely worth the effort.  It tells the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss (Garfield), a Seventh-Day Adventist who feels compelled to enlist in World War II despite the fact that he refuses to kill or even handle a firearm.  He hopes that, as a conscientious objector, he will be allowed to be a medic.  However, during basic training, he is tormented by the men in his company and his commanding officers, Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington), try to have him discharged.  Later, his company is sent to the Pacific to relieve the decimated troops in the Battle of Okinawa.  When his company is forced to retreat, Doss goes back to rescue the wounded, ultimately saving 75 men, many of whom called him a coward.  There is also a secondary story involving Desmond's courtship of a nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) that is very sweet.  This movie is absolutely incredible and the battle scenes are intense and unrelenting (I've heard that veterans who have seen it describe it as very accurate).  Garfield is incredible and the scenes of him being bullied and beaten during basic training are quite affecting and his scenes with Dorothy are adorable.  I was also very impressed by Hugo Weaving's performance as Tom Doss, a man shattered by the events of the First World War who must watch both of his sons enlist in a new war.  This movie is difficult to watch (I liken it to Saving Private Ryan) but the story of one man's courage is definitely compelling and I highly recommend it.