A Gloomy 'Victory'
Fugard's moving new play explores fading post-apartheid hopes
By Don Shirley
Watching Barack Obama speak last Saturday, after his victory in the South Carolina primary, I was seized with excitement about the prospects of Americans from many backgrounds collaborating to fix the country, finally led by America’s first black (or biracial, depending on your perspective) president.
Two hours later, the victory speech had ended, and I was watching a different kind of Victory. That’s the title of Athol Fugard’s latest play, now in its U.S. premiere at the Fountain Theatre.
What a reality check.
Victory is a short, moving, but deeply pessimistic script set in a small town in post-apartheid South Africa. Earlier hopes of reconciliation and harmony have faded. Economic disparity between races still engenders profound barriers in communication and understanding.
The story centers on 16-year-old Vicky (Tinashe Kajese). Before she was born, her parents decided to name their baby in honor of their euphoria over the then-imminent release from prison of Nelson Mandela – Victoria for a girl, Victor for a boy. Among those who helped screen potential names were her mother’s white employers, Lionel (Morlan Higgins) and his wife, who hoped that the end of apartheid would bestow a better life on their housekeeper’s infant daughter.
In the years that followed, Lionel’s wife died, followed by Vicky’s mother. Vicky’s father turned to drink and became abusive. Lionel, a retired teacher, is now in his late 70s, feeling useless and hopeless.
The play takes place on the evening when Vicky returns to Lionel’s home. But this time, she’s the somewhat tipsy accomplice of Freddie (Lovensky Jean-Baptiste), a burglar in his early 20s. Freddie dreams primarily of joining a gang in the big city of Cape Town.
Lionel confronts the pair, with gun in hand. As the three of them recall the past in beautifully braided dialogue and then negotiate what happens next, you can feel the weight of an entire nation hovering over Lionel’s study, even though Fugard rigorously avoids any long political diatribes.
Fugard himself is more or less the same age as Lionel, and he has experienced several real-life break-ins at his home in a small South African town. But he doesn’t overload Lionel with all our sympathies. The man has been so hollowed by his wife’s death that he hasn’t always responded to Vicky. He’s aware of the inequity of his career at a whites-only school. The always reliable Higgins paints an authentic portrait of a troubled man who would like to find something salvageable in his life’s final chapter.
Vicky is the character most torn between past and present, and Kajese’s clouded countenance evokes that conflict with relatively few lines. We can also read behind the lines of Jean-Baptiste’s embodiment of Freddie’s bitter bluster.
Stephen Sachs is an expert at extracting every drop of drama from a racially charged script (recall, most recently, his “Freedom Summer” adaptation of Miss Julie, last year in this same space). Victory had me literally on the edge of my chair.
I didn’t feel nearly the same sense of involvement with two plays about gay couples last weekend – probably because in both scripts one of the men is evil incarnate, while the other is his weak-willed acolyte. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Say You Love Satan is an extended joke about the literal devil (Elias Gallegos) seducing an otherwise nice guy (Doug Sutherland) in Baltimore. Stephen Dolginoff’s Thrill Me is no joke – it’s a musical about the famous Leopold (Stewart W. Calhoun) and Loeb (Alex Schemmer) murder case from the ’20s. With no other characters on stage, Loeb’s villainy sails off recognizable human charts. It’s clinically interesting, but it doesn’t come close to implicating the audience, which is what Fugard manages to do with his haunting Victory.
Victory, Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood, (323) 663-1525. Info: FountainTheatre.com. Closes March 9. For more of Don Shirley’s comments on Say You Love Satan, Thrill Me, and other shows, see Stage listings.
2008-01-31
Published: 01/30/2008
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