WHAT WAS PERFORMED?

Athol Fugard's play was premiered in Johannesburg in 1989 before the release of Nelson
Mandela and it is set five years previous to that, ending amidst the unrest of a renewed
schools boycott by black South Africans against the inferior “Bantu” education policy.
Any fears that the intervening period might have blunted its edge are resoundingly banished
by this powerful staging. It's directed with terrific passion and precision for Two Sheds
Theatre by Roger Mortimer and Deborah Edgington in what is the first professional revival in
London since Fugard brought his Market Theatre version to the National in 1990.
Not only does their production vividly evoke the tensions and insecurity of that era, but the
outstanding performances from all three members of the cast searingly bring home how the apartheid
system gave a particular hideous intensity to concerns that we all share.
The play is in no way dated because there will never come a time when students don't
painfully rebel against their devoted mentors or when there is no clash between the
generations over what counts as liberty and the best way of achieving it.