STRONG ACTING BUILDS STURDY `FENCES'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

The Maxson front porch appears, at first, in full bustle, with family, friends and fellow garbage men dropping in to shoot the breeze, listen to a tall tale or grab some home cooking. Less than a year later, patriarch Troy Maxson's life has splintered, his friends have scattered, and a drunken Troy has that porch to himself. The fence he has built around his house is, at last, complete.

Over the course of 2 1/2 remarkable hours, a little world -- a family -- has been erected and systematically disassembled. Guests of the

Pasadena Playhouse's powerhouse production of August Wilson's ``Fences'' are afforded the exquisite privilege of watching it all happen. Small-scale tragedy doesn't get more potent than this play, or this production.

The remarkable achievement that is ``Fences'' is made greater, certainly, by having performers like Laurence Fishburne (as Troy), Angela Bassett and Orlando Jones to bring it home. But Sheldon Epps' revival at the Pasadena Playhouse offers so much more than the individual strength of its performers.

There's the fading light (designed by Paulie Jenkins) that falls across the Maxson porch as days shift into evenings. There's the cocksure strut of Troy's piano-playing older son, Lyons (played by Kadeem Hardison), as he sidles through the gate looking for a loan from his father, his threads (designed by Dana Rebecca Woods) extra slick.

That careful attention, those loving details, of Epps' production can be found in Jim Bono's (Wendell Pierce's) unspoken finger-pointing instructions to Troy. Or in Bassett's Rose Maxson clutching a rose given to her moments after she learns her marriage is in ruins. The well- worn porch set, designed by Garry L. Wissmann, is indeed the kind of place where interactions both large and small would take place.

And there's Fishburne's Troy: a big man rendered life-size rather than larger than life. I saw James Earl Jones in the role nearly 20 years ago, but watching Fishburne burrow into a man this flawed and human causes the earlier memory to retreat.

The year is 1957, the setting Pittsburgh. Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball star, now a garbage collector, would understand what Arthur Miller's salesman Willy Loman went through. Troy's opportunity for advancement is limited; his worshipful son, Cory (Bryan Clark), might have a shot at athletic glory that his father never saw, and Troy secretly hates him for it. Troy is also the keeper of his mentally diminished brother, Gabriel (Jones).

There's a world outside of the Maxson porch where Troy can find some sort of release, but that release -- we learn -- may come at the expense of Rose, Troy's wife of 18 years, the woman who effectively saved his life.

Cory and Rose will both learn some punishing truths about the man who is supposed to be their rock. ``Fences'' offers some decidedly brutal inter-family encounters among the Maxsons, and audiences at the performance I attended found some rather odd places to laugh and cheer.

The symmetry of Wilson's play is so precise that the first act is Troy's to dominate while Rose takes over in Act 2. Bassett has played women of great strength before. Here, she taps both Rose's inability to match her husband's influence and later, the character's liberation.

Whether the aforementioned showdown with Troy always comes across as theatrically enhanced or whether that was a function of a too-enthusiastic opening-weekend audience is undetermined.

Jones -- primarily known as a comic actor -- artfully and thoroughly rips your guts out as Troy's salvation-obsessed brother, and Pierce's Bono offers up enough wit and wisdom to elevate him. Fishburne, last seen as a gay high-school drama teacher in the Mark Taper Forum's ``Without Walls,'' is utterly convincing as a working-class man with irreparably broken dreams. The character swings a mean bat, uses his words to wound and -- we ultimately learn -- is utterly powerless when that porch is deserted.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

FENCES - Three and one half stars

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. EL Molino Ave., Pasadena.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 1.

Tickets: $38 to $60. [phone].

In a nutshell: Theatrically speaking, a harmonic convergence of play, director and cast.

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Photo:

Troy Maxson (Laurence Fishburne) and wife Rose (Angela Bassett) ponder the marriage that will eventually crumble in August Wilson's ``Fences,'' at the Pasadena Playhouse.