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Athol Fugard “remains at the height of his powers,” said Bob Verini in Variety. At 80, the South African playwright is creating work as insightful as at any point in his half-century-long career of dramatizing the scars that apartheid inflicted on his country. The latest is this “little gem” of a drama, here receiving an “exemplary” American premiere. It takes place in the desert-like Karoo region, as Robert, a white farmer, and Rieta, his biracial former housekeeper, comb through the charred remnants of Robert’s lightning-struck home looking for the artwork of his late wife. It’s a “deceptively simple premise,” but “secrets lurk in the ashes, too,” secrets rich in metaphorical power.
The story is indeed “saturated in allegories,” said Steven Leigh Morris in LA Weekly. The one painting that Rieta uncovers is a watercolor of a blue iris—a resilient flower that we’re told contains enough poison to “bring down an ox.” The plant makes a strikingly apt symbol of the “hope-filled future” South Africa faced when apartheid ended, two decades ago—a future “contaminated” by ongoing problems with violence, poverty, and disease. The depiction of Robert and Rieta’s latent, suppressed love for each other is deeply moving, especially as displayed in the “impeccable performances” of Morlan Higgins and Julanne Chidi Hill.
But Fugard has done better, said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. The Blue Iris adopts the “backward-looking, mournful style” characteristic of his late works, and “the play’s anguish often seems more real than the dramatic circumstances.” Still, this is an emotionally substantial work because it contains more than a hint of self-portrait. The guilt that Robert feels for having left his wife alone as the fatal storm approached suggests Fugard’s own discomfort with the troubles he brought on his family during his long career as a government critic. The play “provides tantalizing insight into an artist who continues to do his country and world theater proud service.”
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.