Thought provoking, gripping and deeply sad, August Wilson’s Fences, staged for the first time in the UK for 10 years, simmers from the outset like a cauldron of toxic masculinity.

This powerful text, written in 1983 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama when it was first produced on Broadway in 1987, is the sixth entry in his 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, articulating the Black American experience.

“You born with two strikes on you before you come to the plate,” aptly sums up the deep-seated anger of principal protagonist Troy Maxson, played so brilliantly by Ray Fearon.

Eaten away by his own bitterness and an anger with life that manifests itself at every turn, Troy is the tragic character who self-destructs, driven by the prejudiced, limiting life and circumstances into which he is born.

There is the utter frustration of failing to become a professional baseball player because, he claims of his colour….or was it that he was too old?

There’s jail for accidentally killing a man he was trying to rob so that he could put food in his mouth, and destroyer of his own marriage as he seeks out an affair to escape the unrelenting drudgery of a job as a garbage collector and the claustrophobia of a house that demands from him every hour of every day. Opportunity is as remote as his own suppressed kindness.

And, as he systematically dismantles his relationship with his two sons, the hammer blow is that he gets the ‘other woman’ pregnant.

She dies in labour, leaving his wife Rose (Madeline Appiah) to raise his lover’s daughter and he to lick his wounds as his marriage and relationship crumbles.

Crammed with recurring themes, Wilson’s play places race relations under the microscope, looks at the damaging effects of betrayal, ambition, family, love in all its guises, forgiveness and the lessons we pass to the next generation.

It is a directorial triumph for Daniel Bailey, although I am not sure I agree with his programme comment, aligning its modern relevance to the tragic death of Professor Jason Arday. For me this play has inbuilt powerful lessons for us all but, at its heart, still articulates the black American story.

However, without Lily Arnolds brilliant, versatile set it would have been a lesser production.

Produced in partnership with Headlong, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and HOME Manchester, Fences is the opening production in Tom Wright’s first season as Artistic Director of Leeds Playhouse.

The cast is just wonderful: Ray Fearson producing a hardness of character in Troy that a bullet would struggle to penetrate. He had an air of Denzel Washington about him; little surprise that the Hollywood movie star played the part in 1987 and in its 2010 revival.

Rose (Madeline Appiah) brought her Shakespearean pedigree to the stage: loving, stoic and doing everything in her power to keep the marriage together until her partner of nearly two decades delivers the ultimate betrayal. She was restrained, dignified and the perfect reflection of emerging feminism in 1950’s America.

Simon-Anthony Rhoden, is the wonderful Gabriel, Troy’s brother, mentally unstable, the result of a war injury, with a fervent belief that he is the Angel Gabriel heralding everyone’s entry into Heaven on his silent, battered trumpet.

Brothers Lyons (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay) and Cory (Josh Tedeku), have new ambitions, the result of changing times, but Troy, almost in his drive to protect them from failures similar to those he has endured himself, is unable to praise Lyons’ musical triumphs or Cory’s talent for football, frustrating the latter’s attempts to win a college scholarship in the belief that he is somehow protecting him from life.

And, his sidekick and drinking buddy Jim Bono (Everal A Walsh), watches it all with a quiet acceptance.

I loved this play: powerful, thought provoking and deeply upsetting, it will serve to make you reevaluate any prejudices fighting their way to the surface in the deeply divided society we now find ourselves in.

Fences Leeds Playhouse - Courtyard Theatre until September 26th