It's a play that has all the virtues, and a few of the failings, of the 50s era in which it is set. Paulette Randall's finely calibrated production also contains good performances from Tanya Moodie as Troy's loyal but unfulfilled wife, from Ashley Zhangazha as the son desperately trying to carve out his own life and from Ako Mitchell as the hero's war-damaged brother. It's a performance that encompasses the whole character, including the rise and fall of Troy. In the play's best scene, Troy confronts his wife with a shameful confession: at this point Henry shows the stricken face of the guilty before lapsing into a self-justifying apologia. Even better is Henry's capacity for stillness, the sure sign of a first-rate actor. But, as well as the formidable energy, Henry gives us the buried anger of a man who knows he was sold short in a white-dominated world. There's a Falstaffian aspect to Troy who, when he gets his Friday pay-check, becomes a compulsive yarn-spinner.

Henry gives us the man in all his rich complexity. As Troy himself reminds us, it's not enough to have athletic prowess: 'A coloured guy's gotta be twice as good before he gets on the team.' Wilson also constantly places him in a wider social context. He fulfils, however, the first duty of a dramatic hero – he is abundantly alive. But Wilson's achievement is to create a towering character full of contradictions: Troy, at different times, is roistering and responsible, debauched and dignified, a victim of history and a domestic tyrant, not least in his relations with his son. The symbolism of the fence Troy intermittently builds to ward off death is a bit clunky and there is an overlong coda trying to make sense of his life. The big question is whether the thwarted dreams of Troy's middle-aged black generation can be redeemed in a changing America. Now he shifts trash but is sustained by his loving wife, Rose, and craves a better future for his son, Cory, who is being courted by a college football scout. Gradually we piece together his history from his slum upbringing to his 15 years in the slammer and his period as a baseball star in a white sporting culture. The action is set in 1957 on the front porch of Troy's house in Pittsburgh where he works as a garbageman.

Troy is on stage for most of the play's near-three hours and what we hear is his extraordinary story. Given that James Earl Jones created the part, there are some big boots to fill and I can only report that Henry confirms he is an actor of massive presence and emotional power. Now he takes on the titanic role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson's Fences which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and which is part of a ten-play cycle about the African-American experience. L enny Henry has won his spurs as a Shakespearean actor in Othello and The Comedy of Errors.

Fences play