Production of Master Harold and the boys Gary Day Review

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Production of Master Harold and the boys                                Gary Day                                                

Review

By Siobhan Donohoe

The play not only starts with two black servants dancing but it also ends on the same note. The hopeful and optimistic beginning betrays the bitter yet ambiguous ending. What opens on a light-hearted note soon deteriorates into a tragic issue that we as individuals cannot turn a blind eye to.

A white, South African Playwright, Athol Fugard, produces the play “Master Harold and the boys”. It is set in the 1950’s on a wet afternoon in the South Africa Town of Port Elizabeth. The small, enclosed space where we witness the play is in a Tea-room which serves as a microcosm of South African society as a whole. The sound of a Jukebox playing predominantly sombre music, but with a slight jovial quality attached to it sets the tone for the play. The fairly simple set and lack of props offers a greater emphasis to the content and the overall message of the play.

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The play centres on a boy (Hally) and his growing up at the time of the Apartheid in 1950’s South Africa. Hally is emotionally effected by his parents. His inability to express his feelings causes him to attack the people closest to him with serious costs. This mis-directed anger emulates Hamlet who, similarly like Hally, had unsettled issues with his father. We, as the audience, can see how he is a product of his circumstances and the racial prejudice of his social conditioning under Apartheid. Fugard successfully conveys how the political attitudes at a certain point in time can affect ...

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