The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard

Wertheim (Indiana Univ.) identifies South African playwright Athol Fugard as arguably the most distinguished living English-language playwright. Some of Fugard's best-known plays include The Blood Knot, Sizwe Bans Is Dead, A Lesson from Aloes, and Master Harold.. and the Boys, and Wertheim notes in his introduction that he has seen performances of almost all of Fugard's canon (the exceptions: No-Good Friday, Nongogo, and Dimetos). The subject of Fugard's plays is often the human toll [that] racism leaves in its wake, wherever it is practiced. According to Wertheim, one of the larger, existential truths of Fugard's plays is the capacity of humankind not only to endure but to transcend its tragic fate; Fugard's parabolic style enables him to provide a general insight open to many applications. Wertheim's study has two particular strengths (among many): its insight into the evolution of the playwright, especially the influence of Albert Camus, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett on Fugard's canon, and its illumination of the symbolic props in the plays, e.g., the shoes and stockings in People Are Living There. An authoritative work superbly written, this book is well suited to upper-division undergraduates and above.