Review: MASTER HAROLD... AND THE BOYS at Arizona Theatre Company

The great South African playwright Athol Fugard's acclaimed MASTER HAROLD... AND THE BOYS is, of course, a scathing chronicle of the Apartheid in his home country from his childhood until more than a decade after this play premiered in 1982. In it, Mr. Fugard manages literary documentation of the shameful era not by depicting its brutal horrors but rather by focusing on the harrowing effect of bigotry on human emotions.

Arizona Theatre Company's current production hits the mark as a historical reminder and, through masterful performances by its cast of three, depicts institutionalized racism's capability to destroy even the most loving relationships.

Set in a 1950 tea parlor in Port Elizabeth, this expert format one scene play of purest realism opens with the shop's two black employees, Sam and Willie, practicing ballroom dancing on a slow business, rainy afternoon. Willie is preparing for a competition considered the apex of the black social community.

Hally, the shop owners' teen son, drops in for a meal and a spot to do his homework. It seems the men have known Hally his whole life, and that Sam is an especially close father figure, later verified when we discover Hally's actual father is a tyrannical alcoholic staying in a hospital for pain from his war injury, a lost leg. Procrastinating his homework, Hally engages Sam in a discussion of various men of "magnitude." The device gets us ginormous amounts of information about these two characters from their stances on Shakespeare, Freud, Gandhi, and many others but none more telling than Hally's enthusiasm for Charles Darwin and his rebuke of Sam's choice of Abraham Lincoln with, "Don't get sentimental, Sam. You've never been a slave, you know." Cringe-y.

Hally seizes the ballroom dancing competition as a subject for his homework, a 500-word essay on an annual tradition. He is skeptical of the event. The discussion swirls to the ballroom dancing floor being praised as "a world without collision."

The comfort is short-lived. Hally learns by phone that his father is coming home. He panics about the changes to his home life, the drinking, yelling, changing his father's chamber pots, and "massaging his stump." In despair, Hally turns on "the Boys" and what was cringe-y is now cruel. While the play has many funny moments, the company of three touches the deepest wells of tragedy.

Odera Adimorah as Willie sets a perfect tone with his preoccupation with the ballroom competition and his reactions to the other's conversations are skillfully subtle. Oliver Prose as Hally shows an impressive emotional range and believable transitions between. Sam is played by Ian Eaton with charm and passion, and power. His love of Hally is genuine, its shattering is real. Director Kent Gash has guided this trio to a masterful evening.

With this semi-autobiographical piece, Mr. Fugard has brutally examined his country's and his own behavior. MASTER HAROLD... AND THE BOYS is worth attending for its classic structure, its archival wonder, its artistic success, and its unfortunate modern relevance.

MASTER HAROLD... AND THE BOYS plays at the Herberger Theater Center through March 1st. arizonatheatre.org

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