The cast of “Master Harold”…and the boys.“Master Harold” …and the boys, the 1982 classic about apartheid in South Africa by Athol Fugard, remains as emotionally tangled and challenging a play to respond to today as it surely must have been when it shook up the theater world then. (Which possibly explains why it was only just last year the material was adapted into a feature film). Thankfully, in Quotidian Theatre Company‘s production, director Bob Bartlett gets nearly everything right, so there is nothing in the room to get between the audience and the story.
Set in 1950, shortly after apartheid began, the play goes about building up its world in a calm, measured way. First, it gives us a young white schoolboy (Ben Davis), who is called differently by his mother’s two black, middle-aged employees: “Master Harold” by Willie (Theodore M. Snead), but “Hally” by Sam (Jason B. McIntosh), who is much friendlier with Hally and shares a mutual student-teacher relationship with him. The play gives us Hally’s family background: his amputee father is in the hospital, but may be coming home soon, news that does not please Hally for reasons the play slowly reveals. Hally, Willie and Sam hang about after hours at Hally’s mother’s tea room, cleaning up and doing homework, rhapsodizing about ballroom dancing and reminiscing about kite-flying, and inexorably approaching a horrible truth. Eventually, predictably but no less painfully, everything boils over into a tearful climax, when it becomes clear just how poisonous racism can be even to those who thought they could get beyond it.
When a play is as direct and deliberate as this one — no theatrical frills, no jokes to fall back upon, nothing but three people interacting in a room with each other and with the invisible society about them — the quality of the end result depends entirely upon the fullness of the performances. Davis, a local actor who seems fresh out of college, has the difficult job of portraying a protagonist who not only can be a complete jackass at times (being a teenager), but who becomes something of a vehicle for society’s abuses — and yet Davis succeeds wonderfully at making Hally both likable and understandable. He is matched by McIntosh, whose confident maturity, easy laugh and soulfully soft voice combine into a performance worthy of a thousand praises. Snead, who has to spend the entire time onstage with very little to do for long stretches but restaurant busywork, still manages to craft a complete Willie, temperamental and naive, yet able to actually learn something in the end.
There are a couple of inconsistencies that take us out of that tea room (set by Robert Gandy) and remind us these fully-formed characters are just actors. For one, Davis’ and Snead’s accents slip occasionally. Additionally, both McIntosh and Davis seem to be intentionally holding back from committing to maximum emotional release at times. They underplay beautifully most of the time, so it would have been even more forceful to see them truly unleash when the big moments come. Nevertheless, this is an assured production of a well-made play, one that has both beautiful and important points to make. For anyone seeking a story that will both teach them something about the world and make them feel something, it would be hard to find better.
“Master Harold” …and the boys runs at Quotidian Theatre Company through April 17. Tickets are available online.
