Quite a conundrum.
Thanks for such a wonderful post. Not only does it bring us one of the best playwrights ever, nobel prize laureate O'Neal, but your sucinct and insightful presentation of this play makes one to want to go see it.
One thing I lament about theater is that as if the genre itself were not sufficiently elitist and sort of underground, the way it has not been commercialized makes it really hard for general audiences to ever even know about some wonderful plays (except when they see the movie adaptation, which was the case with Fences, just to mention a recent one), let alone develop a taste for it.
Your images are amazing. We have grown up watching these actors' movies and it would be such a wonderful experience to see young Spacey, Washington and Bridges deliver their version of the leading character. Where does one find recordings of those performances?
I think that it has been detrimental to literary theater that no commercial industry has been developed around it to make it widely known and distributed/available, just like movies are.
From O'neal I remember The Emperor Jones, a play with strong resonances even today.