As with most effective plays, the true content of Athol Fugard's semi-autobiographical 1982 script,
Master Harold and the Boys, rests in its subtext -- not all of which comes into view in the New Edgecliff Theater production at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
On its placid, almost playful surface it's a rainy afternoon in 1950 in a deserted tearoom in South Africa. Teenager Harold (Kyle Nunn) -- called Hally, as was Fugard as a boy -- is the son of the tearoom's abusive, alcoholic owner. He arrives after school to do homework and be looked after by tearoom employees Sam (Reginald Willis) and Willie (Landon E. Horton). For a time the mutual affection felt by the emerging boy and his surrogate fathers is in control. They recollect joyful (and metaphoric) kite flying. Hally considers writing an essay for school about the social significance of a ballroom dance competition in which both men will soon participate. But this is South Africa. The boy is white. The men are black. An angry phone call between Harold and his mother jerks Hally out of boyhood into the harrowing reality of racial intolerance. They aren't friends. He must be Master Harold and, in the view his society expects of him, the "boys" must be whipped into place. Challenged, he belittles them and spits in the face of the man who has nurtured him.
Willis (who played Fugard's plaintive My Children, My Africa with Know Theater two seasons ago) gets the whole, difficult job done and Sam's whole story told, layering text over subtext, enriching the servant's duties with the man's dreams and a solid comprehension of his world. It's a performance to be celebrated. Horton is fully effective in the shorter, less complex role of Willie. Nunn, unhappily, barely plays Hally's surface. There's no hint of careless mastership in his early scenes and zero sense of loss in the later ones.
Likewise there's scant sense of subtext or menace in Samantha Reno's pedestrian set or Glen Goodwin's summery lighting. It's supposed to be raining. And a human tragedy is unfolding. Grade: B-
MASTER HAROLD AND THE BOYS, presented by New Edgecliff Theater, is on view at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center through March 4.
