Boesman and Lena

by Athol Fugard

Directed by Peter Williams

The New Zealand Students Arts Council, as part of its National Festival of the Arts, to be held in Wellington, August 20 - 27, is bringing to Wellington only, Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena, in association with the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council.

Fugard, is an ex-patriate South African now living in Australia. He has written a number of plays concerning the black predicament in South Africa, and has inevitable collided with the anti-apartheid laws. He was persecuted in South Africa and his black actors were jailed. Against this background, we see his most poignant play — Boesman and Lena.

Boesman and Lena is the story of two South African Cape Coloureds — neither black nor white — driven from their shanty home by the white man's bulldozers — as they have been before and as they will be again. The plot is very simple. We see them on a night like any other, taking shelter under a few pieces of corrugated iron which is their home — Boesman seeking refuge in a bottle of wine. An old black man comes to seek shelter by their fire, is befriended by Lena but beaten by Boesman, as he considers him as only another addition to their problems. The old black dies; afraid of being accused of murder by the white man, they move on.

Fate and South African politics have been unkind to Boesman and Lena — as if moving outside of time, their actions and words are repeated again and again, with no answers or solutions to their predicament being given. Not only do Boesman and Lena mirror the plight of blacks and coloureds in South Africa — but the plight of the have-nots everywhere. Their anger is the anger of all those denied the basic rights of any human being.

Boesman has been reduced by the system to a hardened thug, whereas Lena has been made only more vulnerable by it. They are chained together by despair. The setting for the play is bare with the stage becoming littered with garbage as the play progresses. This starkness highlights the excellence of the acting of the husband and wife team of Anthony Wheeler and Olive Bodill, both South Africans now living in Australia, and Harry Roberts as the Kaffir. This play is not to be missed by those interested in the universal problem of human suffering, and of course by those interested in seeing theatre at its very best.

The play, with the same cast as seen at the Adelaide Festival, will run for a week's season only in [unclear: Wellington, during] the National Arts Festival, Auqust 20-27th at the Concert Chamber.