Ruth Leon recommends… ‘Master Harold’ …and the boys – National Theatre
Ruth Leon recommends‘Master Harold’ …and the boys – National Theatre
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The National Theatre keeps adding to its online platform and it’s worth returning regularly to see what’s new on the site.
New this month is ‘Master Harold’ . . . and the boys, from Tony Award-winning playwright Athol Fugard, a semi-autobiographical and blistering masterwork exploring the nature of friendship. This play, set in South Africa during the apartheid era, is about how institutionalized racism, bigotry or hatred can become absorbed by those who live under it.
We find ourselves in St George’s Park Tea Room, Port Elizabeth, 1950. On a long rainy afternoon, employees Sam and Willie practise their steps for the finals of the ballroom dancing championship.
Hally arrives from school to hide out in his parents’ tea room. These two men have been unlikely best friends to Hally his whole life. But it is apartheid-era South Africa: he’s Master Harold, and they are the boys.
Tony Award-winning playwright Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play explores the ways people can hurt even those they love.
Banned in South Africa, it was the first of Athol Fugard’s plays to premier outside South Africa at Yale Rep in March 1982 and it then transferred to Broadway where it ran for 344 performances, an international hit. It is revived regularly all over the world and considered a classic.
The National Theatre’s production is directed by Roy Alexander Weise and stars Lucian Msamati as Sam and Hammed Animashaun as Willie.
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