Coming of age in the days of apartheid

There's a bit of deception in the title of South African playwright Athol Fugard's 1982 play, '"Master Harold ... and the boys,' now on stage in a crackling production directed by Owen Thompson through Sept. 22 at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, N.Y. 

Just looking at the title, you might think the play was primarily concerned with someone named Master Harold and a few secondary characters, but this drama, set in 1950 just two years into South Africa's system of racial segregation known as apartheid, places "the boys" -- two adult black servants -- on the same level of importance as "master" -- a 17-year-old white boy. 

The men, Willie (played by Devin E. Haqq) and Sam (Alvin Keith), work as waiters at a tea room in Port Elizabeth. It's not specifically mentioned in the play, but after 1948, the city was a significant example of a South African city that was stratified into racially-restricted areas through land zoning and legislation.

Fugard, who is now 92, has written some 35 plays and was one of the leading voices against apartheid, which lasted until Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president in 1994. 

"Master Harold" was initially banned in South Africa and was first produced at the Yale Repertory Theater in 1982 and subsequently transferred to Broadway, where it ran for nearly a year. In 2011, Fugard was awarded a Tony award for lifetime achievement.

Schoolhouse Theater since 1986 has been producing classic and new plays, with a reputation for high quality. Last year's "mis-Understanding Mammy," about actress Hattie McDaniel, was reviewed here.    

"Master Harold" begins on a lighthearted note as the men straighten up the dining room, devoid of customers on a rainy day. Willie is struggling with ballroom dancing in advance of a competition and Sam good-naturedly needles and coaches him.

The Harold of the title, a 17-year-old white boy nicknamed Hally (Will DeVary), arrives, wearing his school blazer and carrying his book bag.

The three have known each other for years, but their respective social status is communicated immediately as Willie jumps to help Hally off with his coat. Yet the play is full of surprises. Fugard won't let us settle into a particular narrative. 

From left, Devin E. Haqq as Willie,
Alvin Keith as Sam, Will DeVary as Hally

As Hally's mother has been busy running the tea room and his father is a disabled alcoholic, the boy has partly been brought up by Willie and Sam. 

However, the men also have taken something from the relationship. Sam is able to trade smart banter with Hally about the great men of history because he has drilled Hally in his lessons, educating himself at the same time.

As Hally starts his schoolwork, the three reminisce about seemingly inconsequential things -- a time Sam and Hally flew a kite, young Hally's desire to hang out in the "servants' room."

But the fond regard these three have for one another can't exorcise the underlying tension of a racially-polarized society. Hally mouths rhetoric about society needing a "social reformer," then falls back into the arrogant manner of the white supremacist: "What does a black man know about flying a kite?" "Why don't you start calling me Master Harold ... Thank of it as a little lesson in respect." 

From left, Devin E. Haqq as
Willie, Alvin Keith as Sam

Hally's emotions become more intense after he remembers having to care for his father, including helping Sam clean him up after he's passed out from drink. The rainy afternoon closes in on the three until a searing confrontation threatens to destroy relationships within a few seconds.

Alvin Keith brilliantly embodies Sam's dignity and lifetime of pain in his final speeches that, against all odds, still contain a note of hope that people -- especially good friends -- can find connection in pure humanity. It's worth noting that for this man in his 40s, racial discrimination in South Africa didn't just start in 1948. It was part of the country's reality since Dutch colonization 400 years before.

While Sam is the older and wiser of the two black men, Devin E. Haqq beautifully expresses Willie's more guileless nature. His reactions to the thunder of Hally and Sam's clash are heartrending. One almost thinks that Willie is more devastated by what is happening.

But there is a disturbing element to Willie's character -- he hits his girlfriend Hilda. Although Sam tells Willie to stop, playwright Fugard, writing in 1980, seems to regard violence against a woman as just one of those things that happens sometimes. No one gets anywhere near as emotional about it as they do about racism and, of course, we never hear from Hilda.     

Will DeVary is clearly an intelligent actor, but his (or Thompson's) decision to play Hally throughout with a consistent tone of angry nastiness left this viewer seeking a bit of vulnerability and some variety of tone. DeVary's South African accent occasionally made it difficult to understand lines. 

Thompson's direction seems to have inspired the cast to plumb the depths of their characters and he keeps the action consistently interesting on a one-set play. He notes in the program that "Master Harold" is the play that means the most to him in four decades of professional theater, having played Hally as a young man. Far from being a period piece, "it has much to say to us in the deeply divided America of the present moment."

Indeed. Even in the realm of world politics, Sam's words ring powerfully: "Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia ... rich man bumps into poor man. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises."

Thompson is also the play's sound designer, responsible for the raindrops and juke box song, among others. Tony Andrea's set design and Dennis Parichy's lighting design are particularly fine, especially a beautiful scrim at the top of the show that illuminates softly the rainy scene outside the tea room's main window. 

This production of "Master Harold" marks a distinguished start to Schoolhouse Theater's season.

   

 

   
 

  

Satchmo: A life of improvisation

The Schoolhouse Theater, in Croton Falls, N.Y. presents a range of plays but it just so happens that the last three plays I've seen there have been about various facets of the black experience and the most recent, "Satchmo at the Waldorf", by Terry Teachout, directed by Bram Lewis, (running through June 8, 2025) is well worth a visit. 

"Satchmo" was Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), one of the great entertainers of the 20th century. His trumpet playing revolutionized jazz and his singing and joyful stage persona made him beloved by millions.

Louis Armstrong in 1955. Photo/Herbert Behrens

At the height of his fame, in the 1960s, his recording of "Hello, Dolly!" bumped the Beatles from the no. 1 spot on the record sales charts. Watch this clip of "Dolly" from a 1965 Berlin concert - it's all there, the incandescent personality, the improvising horn, the scat singing. The U.S. State Department sent him on a performance tour of Africa, Europe and Asia as an American good-will ambassador. 

However, the "Satch" (a nickname derived from "satchel mouth," referring to his wide mouth) we meet in this play is the private Armstrong.

In a sensational performance by Wali Jamal, this Armstrong paces his dressing room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York before a gig in the high-class Empire Room.

He has reached the top of the show business world, with a comfortable room at a prestigious hotel, yet the days when black performers had to find segregated roadhouses and get food from the back doors of restaurant kitchens crowd his memories. 

Wali Jamal as Louis Armstrong

This is a different Armstrong from the man on stage who always sported a huge grin. His first words in play are, "I shit myself tonight." (The play contains a truly spectacular amount of profanity.) He is preoccupied with his declining health, in May 1971, in what will be his last gig before his death in July. 

Jamal brilliantly conveys the charisma of the man, born in the New Orleans red-light district of Storyville and sent to a boys' home at age 12 where he found the magic - a brass band.

Coming up in the jazz joints of New Orleans, Chicago and New York, Armstrong is squeezed by gangsters and finds manager Joe Glaser, a tough-talking Jew from Chicago -- also played by Jamal with a Southside accent and cigar in hand. 

They form a symbiotic partnership - Armstrong leaves all the business aspects to Glaser, whom he always calls "Mr. Glaser," and Glaser advises Armstrong to "stop blowing your brains out playing all them high Cs. That voice of yours - that's where the money is." They operate on a handshake instead of a contract.

Armstrong's story is riveting, but I began to wonder if the script would illustrate why his playing was so special. Then Armstrong turns on a recording of his "West End Blues," featuring a golden cadenza that he describes as playing "kinda like an opera singer showing off ... then I work my way up to that high C, let it ring out like Caruso."

While the 1960s brought Armstrong worldwide acclaim, social issues such as the civil rights movement and new forms of jazz such as be-bop clashed with his image. Putting on a pair of Miles Davis' signature sunglasses, Jamal becomes the cool rival trumpeter, who spares no words.

"Miles Davis loves the way Louis plays trumpet ... Can't play nothing that doesn't come from Louis, not even modern shit. But I hate the way Louis acts onstage. Man gets up there and pulls out that hankie and starts jumping around like Jim Crow on a stick - all to make them sad white motherfuckers happy." 

Davis' view intersects somewhat with my young years in the 1960s when my black music heroes were Jimi Hendrix and the Motown stars, and Louis Armstrong seemed like a nice, old-timey personality without much relevance to the present. I thought that about Ella Fitzgerald, too. Time and appreciation for their musical genius has shown me the shallowness of those early opinions. 

The audience at "Satchmo" was predominantly white, and this is the value of Schoolhouse Theater's bold play choices, courtesy of Lewis, producing director, and Owen Thompson, artistic director. One of the previous works I saw was "MisUnderstanding Mammy," a one-woman play in which actress Hattie McDaniel defends the maid and cook's roles she played against accusations of racial pandering. (The third play was "Master Harold ... and the Boys," set in the time of South African apartheid.) 

Director Lewis keeps the action interesting as Armstrong reminisces, holding his horn, or sits wide-legged as Joe Glaser. Jamal suggests Armstrong's distinctive gravelly voice then switches to Davis' smooth higher-pitched speaking tones, changing his body language for each of the three characters. 

Tom Christopher's set design is described in the program as "the style from the twenties known as Brutalism. Odd angles. Trapezoids."

I found it odd, indeed, since the play is set in the 1970s, Armstrong was a real person and the Waldorf is a real place. It was strange to see Armstrong pick up a phone handset shaped as a block of white plaster, but the nearly all-white set and impressionistic furniture certainly kept the focus on the main character and his emotions.

Dennis Parichy's lighting design literally and subtly highlights the character changes.

Toward the end of his life, he recorded "What a Wonderful World" and it became a signature song for him. This video is from an ABC broadcast in 1967 and between his great big smiles, you can see the seriousness of a man for whom music was existence itself.

About his horn, he says in the play, "Everything I got in this world come outta this. My life, my soul, all right here."

It is indeed a wonderful world that gave us Louis Armstrong.