Cape Town - Celebrating a South African playwright and the venue named after him, one of Athol Fugard's most influential plays will debut in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Master Harold and the Boys is set to return to the Fugard Theatre as part of the venue's 10th anniversary. The new production is directed by Greg Karvellas.
“It’s been an incredibly collaborative process which I’ve really enjoyed,” said Karvellas, who is the artistic director of The Fugard Theatre. “Athol Fugard’s texts are very dense and there’s always quite a lot going on.”
To both Karvellas and one of the show’s performers, local television and theatre actor Desmond Dube, Master Harold and the Boys serves as the ideal play to put on for the anniversary - it helps fulfil an important role that theatre serves.
“We need to go back to why theatre existed in the first place,” Dube said. “Theatre is a mirror to our society. And the reality of the world we’re living in now is that it’s not very different from the 1950s. If we consider the fact that theatre is a mirror to society, then this is the play to be done.”
Premiered in 1982, the play is set in 1950s South Africa and follows the relationship between Hally (played by Kai Luke Brummer), a young white boy, and two black men named Sam and Willy (played by Dube and Siya Mayola respectively). The play focuses on the long-standing relationship between the three characters who have developed a firm friendship despite their cultural backgrounds and the circumstances of the Struggle.
The play is considered to be semi-autobiographical of Fugard’s life. It was also the first of his plays to premiere outside of South Africa, and whose themes directly correlate to racial politics.
“Master Harold ... and the Boys is a very well-made play,” Karvellas said. “It’s brilliantly structured. I think a lot of people look at Athol’s work and especially Master Harold and they kind of roll their eyes and go, ‘Oh, why this again?’ It’s because the reality is that a lot of what is being spoken about in this story set in the 1950s is the foundation of where we are in South Africa in terms of race relations.”
Dube said that the relationship his character has with young Hally was where the play is looking to strike up the serious conversations, with the relationship showing that the situation was not as black-and-white as one might expect.
“One of the things about Sam is that he’s a flawed man himself, learning from this little white boy, and in many ways, also educating him,” he explained.
“They are educating one another. And that is probably how you want to see this play. You want to see friends, who are really friends who are talking about things that friends should be talking about, but who live in a system that divides them.
“If you were to ask anyone in South Africa across racial lines, artists are probably closer to one another in that we relate better interracially because we have these conversations.”
Both Karvellas and Dube hope that the revival of the production will lead to refreshed discussions on its subject matter, and how it ties back into contemporary South African living. “What we need to do is to use theatre to have these conversations.” Karvellas said.
“Whether it’s in the form of plays, or creating those conversations, seminars, where people are going to talk to one another without necessarily fighting one another, or making each other feel guilty, but to say this is the real world we’re living in.”
“It’s a fresh production. We have done a very specific take on it,” Karvellas concluded. “I mean, it’s not set in space or anything but there’s a pretty strong concept idea behind it and I would challenge audiences to come and see a very brilliant piece of classic South African writing done with a brilliant cast.”
Dube said: “Come and watch this piece and you decide who you are. Pick one of the characters and say, ‘I’m definitely that guy’.”
The play runs until March 15.
Tickets are available at the theatre box office or by email at [email protected]
@samuelspiller