Theatre - Kate Kellaway on a riveting South African revival
A prisoner on Robben Island complains when his cellmate tries to teach him the story of Antigone. Greek legend, he protests, is useless. Only history is of value. It is an arresting moment in The Island which was first played over 20 years ago at the Royal Court Theatre and is now at the Lyttelton with the same cast and directed by Peter Brook. The play was a collaboration between the radical white South African playwright Athol Fugard and two young black actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. They took great risks performing the piece at home and only just made it to England in 1972 - Kani secured his visa by posing as Fugard's "gardener".
But is it South Africa's history that gives this play its value now? Or does the story survive independently of time? The play can - and cannot - be the same as the one seen in 1974. It is moving because of what has changed in South Africa, and because of what has not changed. It was never a narrowly South African story; it was, and is, about oppression everywhere. But there is a particular frisson about seeing Kani and Ntshona back on the stage.
The two men are set against deep, unrelenting blackness. They walk round and round groaning and making digging sounds, occasionally interrupted by the persecuting wail of a mosquito.Their mime does not make light of anything as they stagger past with their imaginary pails and wipe the sweat from their faces. This dumbshow continues for what seems like an eternity (it is 15 minutes long), and after a while one feels stunned by the monotony and pain of what they are doing - here is the raw meaning of "doing time".
When their labours come to an end, they hold hands like worn-out children, still panting. Their cell is conveyed by a raised platform - like a raft - a couple of rolled-up blankets, two tin mugs and a pail of water. It could not be more simple or more claustrophobic. John is the younger and more sanguine of the two men; he is the one who is intent on performance, believing, it seems, that if the truth cannot set a man free, then a play, containing it, might. He is obsessed with Antigone because she was punished for doing the right thing by burying her brother. And, as we discover later, he has plans for a radical version of the play to serve his own turn. In the meantime, he is going to have his work cut out teaching Winston his lines. The old fellow is disinclined to get even the outline of the story right. His simian face screws itself up in comic defiance. John takes a break to enact a bit of theatre of a different kind - seizing a tin mug, he turns it into a phone and starts to speak to his friends on the mainland. The urgent lack of playfulness with which he does this and his enjoyment of the unreal communication are touching. And Winston is riveted, leaning over John as if he might hear voices wafting from the tin mug. John wants his friend to ask his wife why she has not written to him for six months. He says his days are "not very different - they are all the same". It is funny, and not funny.
Ambivalent laughter is at the heart of this play. It comes easily to the two men. But, as John remarks, "no one laughs for ever." When Winston tries on the long blonde mane that he is to wear as Antigone, John almost falls apart with mirth. Winston is huffy. But, in private, Winston will roar with laughter himself, peering at his reflection in the pail of water.
The writing of the play is plain, bold and emotionally direct. When it appears that John is to be released from prison, he discovers that "time moves slowly when you've got something to wait for . . . " Winston has nothing to wait for, and when his jealous rage breaks out, it is galvanising. He and John have had a marriage in captivity. He becomes bitterly lyrical as he threatens to forget John and all who succeed him. You don't believe he ever could, and when you witness their Antigone you quail to imagine the reception it would have had from prison staff. At the National, its reception was unequivocal. The audience got to its feet - stirred partly by a Greek legend - but most of all by history.
"The Island" is at the Lyttelton Theatre, London SE1, until 26 February
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