Master Harold...And The Boys presented by Quotidian Theatre at Writer's Center

Master Harold...And The Boys

Writer's Center
4508 Walsh Street Bethesda

The play takes place in South Africa during the apartheid era, depicting how institutionalized racism, bigotry or hatred can become absorbed by those who live under it.

Presented by Quotidian Theatre

Thru - Apr 17, 2011

Fridays: 8:00pm

Saturdays: 8:00pm

Sundays: 2:00pm

Price: $20-$25

Show Type: Drama

Running Time: 1 hr, 35 mins with no intermission

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Master Harold...And The Boys Reviews

Average Rating based on 4 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Washington Examiner - Highly Recommended

"...When South African playwright Athol Fugard's " 'Master Harold'... and the Boys" appeared in 1982, it was heralded as a passionate statement about friendship, humility and apartheid. In the intelligent production of "Master Harold" at Quotidian Theatre, it remains an extremely timely masterpiece about respect and self-knowledge."

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- Barbara Mackay

DCist - Highly Recommended

"..."Master Harold" ...and the boys, the 1982 classic about apartheid in South Africa by Athol Fugard, remains as emotionally tangled and challenging a play to respond to today as it surely must have been when it shook up the theater world then. (Which possibly explains why it was only just last year the material was adapted into a feature film). Thankfully, in Quotidian Theatre Company's production, director Bob Bartlett gets nearly everything right, so there is nothing in the room to get between the audience and the story."

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- Brett Abelman

Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended

"...Athol Fugard’s Master Harold...and the Boys is a one-scene distillation of how institutionalized hatred—South African apartheid, in this case—can perpetuate itself as an omnipresent receptacle for an omnipresent substance: pain. The most openly autobiographical of Fugard’s plays shows us, over the course of a languid, rainy afternoon 60 years ago, schoolboy Hally’s close friendship with Sam, the black man roughly a generation his senior who works at his mother’s café. One problem with Bob Barlett’s initially sluggish but ultimately successful Quotidian Theatre production is the way Ben Davis’ performance obscures the age of Hally, our stand-in for the playwright as a young man. The script puts him at 17, but Davis alternately seems both half a decade younger and older—not unlike a lot of actual 17-year-olds, admittedly. In Sam, Hally finds an adult who doesn’t treat him like a kid. In Hally, Sam finds a white kid who doesn’t treat him as a Kaffir—at least not until bad news turns him petulant and vindictive. It’s powerful stuff, once the production has balled up its fist. But it takes its time, missing opportunities for comedy in the slack-paced first half. The good news is that as Sam, Jason B. McIntosh is sensitive and soulful, resisting any slide into The Legend of Bagger Vance’s magical Negro platitudes. Comedy is tougher than tragedy, it’s often said, and this production could be an exhibit for the prosecution: When the going gets sad, the show gets good."

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- Chris Klimek

DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

Anyone can see the effect of oppression upon the oppressed, but what effect does it have on the oppressor? The gift that Athol Fugard gives us in “MASTER HAROLD”…and the Boys, now receiving a superb production at Quotidian Theatre, is that he shows us the answer straight on, and with undeniable force.

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- Tim Treanor

Master Harold...And The Boys presented by Quotidian Theatre at Writer's Center