Exits And Entrances: Curtain Lines

In writing about his experiences as an aspiring playwright working with the actor known as his country's Olivier, the politically poetic South African Athol Fugard's newest work is a healthy serving of theatrical comfort food. Exits And Entrances trods the familiar boards of a great star in the twilight of his career passing on his sage wisdom to a wide-eyed youth, only to have his student become a part of a rebellious effort to take his country's theatre into a new direction.  But done with such a loving and sincere touch, and with two winning performances in director Stephen Sach's production, it's an entertaining and spirited ninety minutes of good solid theatre.

Though technically fiction, the play is steeped in real events.  The title has a double meaning, as the piece begins on the day the Union of South Africa succeeded from the British Commonwealth to became a republic.  On this day a character based on the author, known only as The Playwright (William Dennis Hurley) recalls his days as a dresser for an aging actor named Andre (Morlan Higgins), based on the Afrikaner classical actor Andre Huguenet, celebrating his thirty years on the South African stage with a grand production of Oedipus Rex.

Though suspicious of the lad's career goal ("Your concern for the sanctity of the written word gives me great concern… that you have literary ambitions!") Andre is all too happy to have a captive audience with which to share stories of his life in the theatre.  ("The drunkenness…  the sexual orgies… Oh, if only it were true.")  Though pompous and demanding, Fugard sees the man feverishly trying to mask his vulnerabilities, just as the tightly strung girdle he wears under his kingly robes masks his potbelly, making the character truly sympathetic even when he's lashing out at those in the noble profession of theatrical criticism.  ("Those little vipers with their notebooks and pencils take the magic out of everything.")  Years later, when The Playwright expresses his excitement for writing political plays about his country's black slums ("Their world is even more real to me than the white one I live in.") Andre is repulsed at the though of such movements for naturalism and sees his type of theatre on the way out.

The two actors make a convincing team.  Though his role as The Playwright comes off as secondary, Hurley's respect for the old actor and need for his approval is evident throughout and helps us enjoy Higgins' antics during Andre's more self-centered moments.  In the showier role, Higgins is often rivitening as a man who only feels comfortable while in the skin of others.  In the evening's most telling moment, Higgins conveys the actor's deep loneliness in the outside world as Andre describes whatever theatre he currently works at as his home.  The comfort he feels in a place where he can freely transport himself and his audience to another place and time will no doubt be severely disrupted when playwrights like, say Athol Fugard, start bringing the outside world downstage center.

Photos by James Leynse  Top:  Morlan Higgins

Center:  William Dennis Hurley and Morlan Higgins

Bottom:  William Dennis Hurley