Word: fugard
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Just before he flew to the U.S. to direct a splendid revival at Princeton this month of his favorite early play, Hello and Goodbye, dramatist Athol Fugard asked friends at a dinner party, "Am I about to become the new South Africa's first literary redundancy?" Although he tells the story with a twinkle, that fear has hovered over him for years. In his mind he is a poetic playwright, but the world has seen him as a political, even polemic one, and his works are valued more as testimony against apartheid than for their subtle interplay of emotion...
...Fugard first felt his relevance eroding when black anger overwhelmed white liberal gradualism in the '80s. Then, as the intransigent white government relented and prospects for peace improved, critics -- notably in New York City -- seemed to lose interest in a man they once hailed as great. Fugard's most recent pieces, My Children! My Africa! and Playland, dealt with South Africa's smoldering race hatred via small-scale, personal tragedies. Each had success elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world but closed quickly off-Broadway. Even at home in South Africa, where the shows were lauded, people wonder what...
...journey to somewhere unusual. Paper mache animals perch on pebbles bordering a room crowded with sparkling colored candles, odds and ends of flowered furniture. As soon as Janine Poreba and Jennifer Sun walk onstage and begin to speak, however, it is their engrossing performances which overflow the room. Athol Fugard's brilliant script is given life by an extremely talented cast, who bring a piece of South Africa's karoo home to Harvard...
Unlike many of Fugard's other works, in which more prominent racial themes articulate the concerns of a generation of South Africans, The Road To Mecca revolves primarily around the friendship between Helen, an older Afrikaaner woman, and Elsa, a young English-speaking white South African. While there is a subtext of racial awareness in the form of Elsa's activism, this play is really the story of a special friendship between women as they discover the importance of living their lives as they will them to be, and learn how to take on the courage and responsibility...
...Fugard's play was originally staged in this country in New York in 1989, and it's disappointing it didn't come to Boston earlier. But it's found in the New Repertory Theatre a production company that can do it justice. Joanna Zazofsky's direction is marred only by the excursions of the actors onto the floor in front of the first row, which ion a theater this crowded, is probably better avoided. Eric Levenson's projection screens are movingly utilized to present a photo montage of the African countryside and the life of the town-ship. This...