Master Harold and the Boys at The Schoolhouse Theatre: A Review

Master Harold and the Boys at The Schoolhouse Theatre: A Review

The genius of Master Harold and the Boys, Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical confessional about growing up in Apartheid South Africa is that when the characters talk about the inhumanity of our species they are talking about racism; and when they are talking about racism they are talking about our species’ inhumanity. And, to me, that’ what lifts this allegory of a crippled and dying white patriarchal South Africa above a polemic and plants Master Harold amongst the great kitchen table tragedies of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill.

Hallie, Willie and Sam Talk About Dancing and Charles Darwin

For an hour and change, we watch the young white Afrikaner “Hally” discuss ballroom dancing, kite flying, and men of magnitude like Charles Darwin, Alexander Fleming, Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ with Willie and Sam, the two black waiters in his mother’s tea shop. We see them yearn for the next great agent of change who will bring humanity’s salvation. We see that Willie and Sam are family to Hally – the balm that soothes the turmoil of his blood family that is torn asunder by his crippled, abusive drunkard of a father confined to a hospital bed and a mother divided between her allegiances to her husband and her son. Throughout this all they are really talking about racism.

Master Harold, Willie and Sam Talk About Fathers and Sons

The more their camaraderie is revealed the more the tension mounts as we wait for racism to rear its ugly head. Finally, when Hally’s mother fails to prevent the hospital from discharging his father he unleashes his contempt. When Sam reminds Hally to respect his father, Master Harold unloads on Sam. And the effect of witnessing Master Harold’s institutionalized hatred is no less shocking because you’ve been waiting for it all play long. Finally, racism is front and center. And it remains there until Sam tries to put the toothpaste back into the tube because the play is really about the inhumanity of our species. And Sam understands that forgiveness is our only salvation from ourselves.

A Drama Critic Confesses

Watching this great play, which I had only read but never seen, I wondered if there had ever been greater performances in Westchester County than those of Will DeVary as Hally, Alvin Keith as Sam, and Devin E. Haqq as Willie. Watching their cohesion on stage and experiencing the underlying tension of the drama throughout I wondered if Owen Thompson’s direction was the greatest I’ve ever witnessed.

Who knows? Who cares? Go see this play before it closes on September 22 – you’ll drive home grateful that you live so close to Croton Falls.