Theatre review:Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act

The JMK Award returns to its new home at the Orange Tree Theatre, a home which feels fitting as it has staged Athol Fugard plays before, and this year's winner Diane Page has chosen to direct Fugard's 1972 play Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, about the aspects of the Apartheid laws that banned interracial relationships. Errol (Shaq Taylor) is black or "Coloured," the headmaster of a school, with a religious background but an enquiring mind about evolutionary theories that leads him to seek out a book recommended by his university course, but unavailable in any library he'd be allowed to join. Frieda (Scarlett Brookes) is white or "European," six years older than him, single, and the librarian who allows him to study the texts he wants even though he's not allowed to actually borrow them. We meet them a year after they first met, in the darkened back room of the library, where they've been conducting their illegal affair.

Theatre review: "Master Harold" ...and the Boys

Probably South Africa’s most famous playwright, Athol Fugard is known for his plays skewering Apartheid; ”Master Harold” …and the Boys is described as semi-autobiographical, which may explain some of the background to why an Afrikaner turned so violently against a system designed to keep him in privilege. The setting is a tea room in Port Elizabeth, during a rainy afternoon in 1950 – water hammers down on a skylight over Rajha Shakiry’s set, keeping any potential customers away. So in between cleaning jobs the two black staff members Sam (Lucian Msamati) and Willie (Hammed Animashaun) have plenty of time to practice their steps for an upcoming ballroom dancing competition. That is until teenager Hally (Anson Boon,) son of the tea room’s owners, comes back from school, setting up at one of the tables to do his homework.

Theatre review: Blood Knot

Probably South Africa's best-known living playwright, Blood Knot is one of Athol Fugard's earliest (1961) anti-Apartheid plays, and it's one in which the regime splits a family down the middle. Sons of the same black mother but with different fathers, Zach (Kalungi Ssebandeke) is black, while his brother Morrie (Nathan McMullen) can pass for white, but has lived most of his life on the black side of the divide. There was a brief period when Morrie went away, but he returned a year ago to their shared shack where, for reasons that are never explicitly revealed, he seems to stay 24/7. Zach goes out to work - as a gatekeeper making sure no black kids go into a white park - and does the shopping, while Morrie stays at home every day cooking and planning for the small farm they'll buy when they've saved up enough of his brother's wages. But after a year, Zach is also feeling trapped.

Theatre review: Sizwe Banzi is Dead

Last autumn, as well as Athol Fugard's Apartheid-era The Island in the Clare, the Young Vic had a short run of another of his plays (also co-devised with John Kani and Winston Ntshona.) So short a run in fact that I couldn't fit it into my schedule, and it also sold out very quickly. But its popularity didn't go unnoticed so the theatre has brought Sizwe Banzi is Dead back to the Maria for a longer run, and the story of black South Africans making their way in the world of work while navigating the labyrinthine system of paperwork and arbitrary restrictions proves worthy of the attention. But before we get to the show itself, Matthew Xia's production manages something of a first: I've never before seen what could legitimately be called a coup de théâtre pulled off 20 minutes before the play even started. In case you're trying to stay spoiler-free I'll save it for the next paragraph, after the text break.

Theatre review: The Island

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: This review is of the final preview performance before Press Night.

The Island currently being reconstructed in the Young Vic's Clare is Robben Island, better known as the place Nelson Mandela spent his years of captivity. Athol Fugard's play, devised with John Kani & Winston Ntshona, follows a couple of days in the lives of two political prisoners, cellmates who didn't know each other until they offended the Apartheid regime and ended up spending 24 hours a day together. When we meet them they've spent a day moving wheelbarrow loads of sand up and down the beach, a task designed to turn them on each other as each sees his cellmate make his own job an endless one. This particular bit of cruelty is a new one, but typical of their lives there. Once finally back in their cell their exhaustion doesn't stop them working towards a small triumph of their own: There's an inmates' concert coming up and John (Daniel Poyser) is intent on staging a version of Antigone, with Winston (Jimmy Akingbola) in the title role.