Friday, June 25, 2021

"Master Harold" ... and the Boys
Syracuse Stage
Gilbert McCauley, director

Price: Video on Demand: $30 individual, $60 household
Online

Written in 1982, "Master Harold" ... and the Boys ranks among the very best of the great South African playwright Athol Fugard's work. Set in 1950 in Port Elizabeth, this remarkable play exposes the corrosiveness of systemic racism with raw, unsentimental honesty. The play is autobiographical ("the most intensely personal thing I have ever written" - Fugard) and originates in a friendship between a white teenager and a Black man, who is a kind of surrogate father and an employee of the family's struggling tea room. When stressful circumstances overwhelm the teen, he lashes out in misdirected and emotionally devastating fury that in an instant threatens to undermine years of affection. Heartfelt, revelatory and a lasting tribute from the playwright to "the most beautiful friend I ever had."