Roundabout Theatre Company tonight opened Athol Fugard's THE ROAD TO MECCA, featuring Tony Award® winner RoseMary Harris as "Miss Helen," Carla Gugino as "Elsa Barlow" and Tony Award® winner Jim Dale as "Marius Byleveld," and directed by Gordon Edelstein.
Set in the region of South Africa known as the Karoo, The Road to Mecca tells the story of an elderly woman who has spent the years since her husband's death transforming her home into an intricate and dazzling work of art. The reclusive Miss Helen (Rosemary Harris) has become depressed and appears increasingly unable to care for herself. Pastor Marius Byleveld, who embodies the village's conservative values, is determined to get Miss Helen into an old-age home. Her friend Elsa (Carla Gugino), a young teacher from Cape Town who is deeply suspicious of the patriarchal traditions Byleveld represents, is just as determined that Miss Helen remain free.
What did the critics think? Find out now!
Ben Brantley, The New York Times: In this quiet, slow and ultimately powerful production, directed by Gordon Edelstein and featuring strong performances from Jim Dale and Carla Gugino, Ms. Harris plays Miss Helen, an elderly South African woman who has hitherto seemed gracious, fretful and rather prosaic. Now she has given undiluted voice to the kind of fear that lurks in everyone — one of those personal fears that are so profound that people shirk from naming them. She is magnificent and shrunken, harrowed and harrowing.
Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: While “The Road to Mecca” meanders — and its intimacy is lost in the vast American Airlines Theatre — the show’s low-key approach ultimately works in its favor. Even better, we get to watch luminous stage icon Rosemary Harris duet with Tinseltown glamour-puss Carla Gugino (“Sin City”)...While far from perfect — Fugard occasionally lapses into sappy melodrama; set designer Michael Yeargan’s South African shack looks more like a Santa Fe B&B — the show is a slow-burning pleasure.
Marilyn Stasio, Variety: Fugard is a dazzling wordsmith, but he's given to writing at wearying length. So it's heavy going for much of the first act...[Miss Helen finds her voice] in a speech that Harris delivers with an incandescent flame in her eye. It's a long time coming, and for too much of the play thesp is constrained by Miss Helen's fragility. But when the moment comes, Harris lights her candles and sets the stage ablaze.
Mark Kennedy, Associated Press: "It grows on you," Harris' character says at the beginning of the play. She's talking about the small South African village where the action is set, but she might as well be describing the piece itself, which really only gets going in Act 2...The face-off between Elsa and the pastor has been a long time in coming — Act 1 drags on way too long simply to establish the jeopardy Miss Helen is in. The play then has a hard time deciding how to end after Miss Helen has taken the stage for her grand soliloquy, a manifesto for any artist to defy convention.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: Fugard writes impeccably honed dialogue; it’s just that there’s so much of it, and his reams of exposition are far from seamless. Without a director capable of accessing the lightness and delicacy in his dense thickets of words, his plays can veer into windy speechifying. There’s also a tendency here for the playwright to belabor his metaphors, making the 2½-hour drama repetitious, often dull and stylistically dated. This is at heart an intimate play that seems needlessly stretched, swimming in a too-large theater.
Matt Windman, amNY: Although the production features a fine cast including Rosemary Harris, Jim Dale and Carla Gugino, it's about as exciting overall as watching paint dry. All three actors would benefit from bringing more passion to their performances. Although their characters are credibly portrayed, they approach them so gently that it makes this lightweight play feel even more insubstantial.
