Riveting “‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys” lays bare the brutal, devastating and corrosive effects of racism.
Initially banned in South Africa, the powerful one-act, semi-autobiographical play was written by playwright Athol Fugard in 1982, when apartheid was rampant. Arizona Theatre Company opened “‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys” Friday, Jan. 24, in the Temple of Music and Art. Opening the production on the cusp of Black History Month boosts the play’s immediacy and relevance.
Set in the St. George’s Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth in 1950, the play centers on teen, Hally (Oliver Prose), dressed in his school blazer, and two middle-aged black men Sam (Ian Eaton) and Willie (Odera Adimorah), who clean and tend to the tea room in the age of institutionalized segregation and discrimination based on race. The two men joke and chat about women, despair and winning a ballroom dancing competition.
The men practice dancing with imaginary partners, with Sam playfully chiding Willie for his lack of form and style, the teen pops in for a meal at the restaurant his family owns and to do his homework. Hally and Sam discuss Hally’s schoolbooks and swap stories and their list of “men of magnitude.” It’s clear that Sam and Willie are Hally’s pals and that Sam is a father figure.
Hally grew up in the Jubilee Boarding House, which his mum owned and where Sam and Willie lived. Hally and Sam shared time, books and “you should have knocked” moments. Hally’s mother often had to search for her son in the “servants’ quarters,” which was one of the few places Hally felt comfortable as a child.
Hally and Sam warmly recall Sam draping brown paper on two pieces of wood to built a kite and Sam teaching the doubtful little boy how to fly it. The tender tale was underpinned with racism, however. When Hally realized that Sam was making a kite, he thought no black man would know how to build a kite.
The mood shifts dramatically and Hally explodes in rage when a phone call reveals that his disabled, drunken father would be coming home after an extended hospital stay. A grotesque Hally is unleashed. He spews slurs, racist jokes, condescending insults and humiliating orders.
Director Kent Gash keeps tension high. There are uncomfortable, squirm-in-your-seat moments at the language and the treatment of the two men.
Prose conveys his white privilege, laced with the desperate need for Sam’s and Willie’s affection and a smug air of superiority and entitlement. Prose’s emotional range is exceptional: He goes from lighthearted banter to bitter rage to a moving tearful breakdown. At some points on opening night, however, Prose’s speedy delivery of the dialogue in a white South African accent was unclear, not well enunciated.
Eaton is charismatic and charming and shows both dignity and humiliation at Hally’s ghastly mistreatment. Adimorah captures the contradictions of Willie, a man with heart and anger. Adimorah spends much of the play on his hands and knees scrubbing floors, symbolizing his station in life.
The masterful single-room set is the interior of the tea room. Jason Sherwood, scenic designer, created a restaurant that reflected the confinement and restrains of the time and allowed the audience to imagine a flow of customers sipping tea. The constant drizzle of gentle rain outside the windows added a softness to the hardness of the action inside. The Rock-Ola jukebox helps create the 1950s ambiance.
Some elements of “‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys” are based on Fugard’s life — his mum owned a tea room, for instance. It feels precise, personal and it is slow to reveal the circumstances of Hally’s life until the bitter, brutal conclusion. Fugard contrasts this ugliness by using the beauty and grace of dancing as a metaphor for an ideal “world without collisions.”
Well-produced “‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys” elevates the audience’s awareness of the evils of racism and social injustice while entertaining with inspired acting .
It continues in Tucson through Feb. 8 and then heads to the Herberger Theater in Phoenix.
