Word: fugard
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...Athol Fugard has set My Children! My Africa! in Camdeboo, South Africa in the autumn of 1985, and the different ways his three characters choose to fight the lunacy are freighted with historical poignancy. "Mr. M" (Allen Oliver) wants sustained change through education and discipline, but his protege Thami (Donald Swaby) wants direct action, revolutionary action. Isabel (Eliza Gagnon) is afraid that, in the upheaval she knows is necessary for change, Thami will dismiss their friendship as "an old-fashioned idea...
...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...
...stricken, dignified posture at the end of Master Harold is subtle and powerful acting, and his performance throughout the play lifts the Lyric Stage's production to an interpretation of Fugard's terrible, wonderful play that does it justice...