Lantern Theater's "Sizwe Bansi is Dead' (1st review)

From the first moment Forrest McClendon walks cheerfully on stage as the photographer Styles in his Port Elizabeth storefront studio, circa 1974, you have reason to believe you're in for a rewarding evening. Here, after all, is a confident actor in total control of his setting and audience, portraying the work of a master playwright (Athol Fugard) on a subject of maximum dramatic impact (the outrageous evil of racial apartheid in South Africa)— a subject, moreover, on which Fugard is unrivaled— all under the aegis of the Lantern, a theater company with a very clear and serious sense of its own purpose and how to achieve it.

Styles is a man who has chosen humor as his tool for coping with a repressive system. He charmingly recounts his past life as a mechanized "black monkey" in a Ford assembly plant (although, as he puckishly points out, "South African monkeys are much better trained" than the workers at his plant). He vividly and mockingly describes management's frenzied efforts to spiff up the plant and affix smiles to workers' faces in preparation for a visit by Henry Ford II, who on the much-awaited day barely steps inside for a peek.

After several frank conversations with himself, Styles takes an awesome gamble in his quest to make his life his own: He quits the faceless assembly line for its antithesis: the business of photographing faces. In his studio, he finds the cockroaches exercise more control over their lives (as well as greater defiance of their landlord) than his fellow autoworkers do. Nevertheless, he derives satisfaction from capturing on film "people who would be forgotten, and their dreams with them, if it wasn't for Styles."

A customer walks in

So far, so good. After a half-hour or so we have the makings of an engaging one-man drama. But then a customer walks into Mr. Styles's studio and the whole scenario shifts. Sizwe Bansi (played by Lawrence Stallings) is a decent young man trying to make an honest living in a land where a black man's decency and honesty go unrewarded. He can't get a good-paying job because he lacks the necessary permit stamp in his passbook, and he lacks the street smarts to work the bureaucracy to obtain such a permit. He wants a photo of himself to send to his wife and children, 150 miles way, to assure them (and himself) that he's doing fine.

Before we know it, Styles has vanished— we never see him again— and we are out on the street with Sizwe and his more cynical friend Buntu (also played by McClendon), squandering their pay on booze in a squalid club. In the process they stumble upon an opportunity for Sizwe to get the permit he needs— but only if he surrenders his most precious possession: his identity.

The first act of Hamlet

As in the case of Styles, here too are the makings of a potentially compelling drama. The problem is that by the time Sizwe appears, we in the audience have so much invested in Styles that Sizwe is merely an annoying distraction. In effect we have here the first act of two different plays— very good plays, to be sure. But it's sort of like watching the first act of Hamlet, followed by the first act of Romeo and Juliet. When you leave the theater, you can't help wondering: What ultimately happened to these guys?

According to the program notes, Sizwe Bansi is Dead was created under extraordinarily difficult conditions: It was a forbidden interracial collaboration among black and white playwrights, improvised in a rehearsal room and not committed to paper for years for fear of the South African government. (You can be damn sure their work-in-progress didn't enjoy the benefit of open readings.) For that reason alone, it's an important piece of theater, very well mounted, performed and directed (by Peter DeLaurier). But if the three playwrights wouldn't mind some input from one more white writer talking from the free zone of Philadelphia, let me suggest two improvements:

—1. Find a way to bring the separate stories of Styles and Sizwe together at the end. That photo of Sizwe that Styles snapped has the potential to preserve Sizwe's identity or destroy his dreams, or possibly both. Why not make it a dramatic element, instead of just a transitional prop?

—2. Alternatively, scrap the story of Styles, so the audience becomes totally invested in Sizwe from the start. When Sizwe reluctantly surrenders his identity (at the conclusion of my revamped first act), let the audience return for a second act to learn whether this deal with the devil succeeded or failed, and how so.

I know, I know— who am I to give advice to Athol Fugard? By all means, see Sizwe Bansi is Dead; you won't waste the evening or your money. But apartheid, happily, is now consigned to history's dustbin; even South Africans can discuss this play freely today. So, please— exercise the rights that many black South Africans died for (not to mention our forebears at Valley forge) and give me your feedback, yes?



To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.

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