I’m very partial to Athol Fugard’s work, but thirty years on, I remember very little about this one. Even the log, which was only a few years after the event, says:
Little recollection, strangely.
I saw this with Bobbie Scully, who seemed keen to see Fugard with me back then. Janie also has a taste for his work.
Here is the Wikipedia entry for this play/production.
I think the problem for me/us was that it was a story that pre-dated Nelson Mandela’s release but we were seeing it very soon after that momentous event. In that sense it felt a bit like old news, although of course the injustices and arguments depicted were still (are still) relevant.
Michael Billington in the Guardian loved it:
Michael Coveney in The Observer was less sure, finding it, unusually for Fugard, overly sentimental.