VICTORY. To 25 August.

Bath

VICTORY
by Athol Fugard.

Theatre Royal In rep to 25 August.
16, 21 Aug 7.30pm Mat 18, 22, 25 Aug 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr No interval.

TICKETS: 01225 448844.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 August.

A brief chronicle that needs to look to dramatic values as well as ideas.
With many new plays leaving a feeling they’d have been improved if they’d been shorter, it’s hard to blame Athol Fugard for writing this hour-long piece. And if it’s not the summative account we might look for from a playwright who tracked apartheid’s impact throughout South African society, no-one can impose such a duty on him.

But to offer a 60-minute piece as a complete performance somewhere like Bath Theatre Royal risks leaving audiences feeling short-changed, despite the chance to see senior leading actor Richard Johnson, a fine cast all round, good set, and a number of important points being made. With two top-price Saturday night seats setting the plastic back £59, it's a heavy price when you’re leaving the theatre by eight-thirty.

Fugard provides a framework for debate on the new South Africa, gift-wrapped rather lumpily as a play. Lionel, retired White schoolteacher of rich, White boys, finds his house wrecked by young Black burglars. He’s shocked to find one of them is the daughter of his former apartheid-regime domestic servant.

Ever paternal and kindly, he’d hoped she would continue her education but she’s taken to alcohol while boyfriend Freddie is looting the joint to escape the hangover of servitude in this desert village and reach the big city – Cape Town, with the freedom he defines in terms of gang-membership and drug-fuelled crime.

Vicky, named as her birth coincided with Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, is caught between the two. She’s also the character most manipulated to fit Fugard’s scheme. Her drinking is forgotten for most of the play. She returns from getting Freddie some food dressed as a maid, simply to allow him to treat her as a servant. Thankfully, Pippa Bennett-Warner infuses her schematic character with some depth.

Fugard is honest enough to show that the new South Africa’s key word, “hope”, is something difficult to hold on to. There are vital points made. But simple dramaturgical matters are clumsily handled: a gun, and the much-discussed (and as Vicky says, pointless) tying-up of Lionel, leaving the impression the writer’s mind is on ideas rather than his story.

Vicky: Pippa Bennett-Warner.
Freddie: Reece Ritchie.
Lionel: Richard Johnson.

Director: Cordelia Monsey.
Designer: Paul Farnsworth.
Lighting: Jason Taylor.
Sound: Gregory Clarke.
Music adviser: Mick Sands.

2007-08-16 10:12:51