NY Review: 'My Children! My Africa!'

When theater addresses political issues, the playwright must perform a delicate balancing act. The characters have to be three-dimensional people first and representatives of their class, gender, and race second. The South African author Athol Fugard has been one of the most skilled at combining the personal with the political. In works like “Master Harold…and the Boys,” “Valley Song,” and “Boesman and Lena,” he never fails to portray his protagonists’ humanity even as it is being crushed by the segregationist regime’s oppressive policies, and his characters are never reduced to mere spokespeople for particular points of view. In his 1989 “My Children! My Africa!,” however, the sociological considerations overtake the verisimilitude. Fortunately, in the new revival from Signature Theatre, Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s muscular direction and a trio of intense performances rescue the production from becoming a debate.

Ironically, the play starts that way. In a small Eastern Cape Karoo town, black high schooler Thami Mbikwana is engaged in a rhetorical exercise with Isabel Dyson, who is visiting from the white all-girls’ academy. The issue is whether curriculum for boys and girls should be different because of perceived differences between the sexes. (This foreshadows a grave conflict that arises later in the play.) Thami’s teacher, the stern and loving Mr. Myalatya, nicknamed Mr. M, is inspired by their lively and intelligent exchange to team the two in an English literature competition. But as these unlikely friends become closer, their unusual relationship is threatened by the town’s simmering racial tension. Thami quits the competition when he joins a student movement to boycott the school until blacks are given an education equal to whites, a demand paralleling Isabel’s plea for girls’ equality. The tradition-bound Mr. M regards Thami’s actions as destructive and cooperates with the white police. As a result, Thami’s comrades retaliate and the lives of all three are changed forever. Meanwhile, Isabel stands by helplessly and struggles to comprehend why it seems the black community is tearing itself apart.

Fugard weaves a compelling tale, but he indulges in too many long, extraneous scenes and monologues. The play could lose a good half hour without suffering. Also, the motivations seem to be imposed by the author rather than growing organically. Isabel is too obviously a symbol of the well-meaning white liberal population, Mr. M of the older generation of South African blacks patiently bearing their oppression and trying to work within the system, and Thami represents the rage-filled younger set who can no longer wait for freedom. Luckily the actors playing them endow these figures with passion and dimension beyond their social classifications, while Santiago-Hudson stresses the conflict between people rather than politics.

James A. Williams carefully details Mr. M’s love of Africa and its youth. He creates a clear, strong objective of keeping his small world perfectly in place and thereby believably makes Thami’s revolutionary ideas seem like a bigger threat than apartheid. Allie Gallerani handily avoids making Isabel into a clichéd plucky heroine by emphasizing her stubborn side. Stephen Tyrone Williams registers most strongly as the embittered Thami, painstakingly taking us on the disillusioning journey from optimistic schoolboy to fiery activist.

The production is given moving specificity by Neil Patel’s barbed-wire-and-corrugated-metal set, Marcus Doshi’s sensitive lighting, and the evocative, sweet original music of Bobby McFerrin.             

Presented by and at the Signature Theatre, 480 W. 42nd St., NYC. May 24–June 17. Schedule varies. (212) 244-7529 or www.signaturetheatre.org. Casting by Will Cantler, Telsey + Company.