Victory
The Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles
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★★★
Athol Fugard’s “superior, unmissable” new play succeeds on every level, said Bob Verini in Variety. The South African playwright’s taut, 60-minute one-act “works first of all as a cat-and-mouse, intruder-in-the-house thriller.” Lionel, a bookish white teacher, has his house broken into by Vicky and Freddie, a young black couple. Lovensky Jean-Baptiste’s Freddie, “his mood swinging from furious glee to bewilderment when events outrun his planning,” rashly takes the teacher hostage. Soon Lionel discovers that Vicky is, in fact, the daughter of his former housekeeper. This revelation makes Victory a wrenching tale of betrayal. But this wouldn’t be a Fugard play if there weren’t “an element of political allegory as well.” Though South Africa’s formal system of apartheid was dismantled two decades ago, Fugard makes clear that the country’s racial and political divides are as deep as ever.
As Lionel, “Morlan Higgins conjures a world of pain,” said Charlotte Stoudt in the Los Angeles Times. The old, disillusioned liberal can hardly blame the desperate criminals in his home, but he certainly cannot hide his disappointment that they should behave so crudely. “This superb performer finds more power in listening than most actors would with a mountain of dialogue.” Like the rest of Stephen Sachs’ spare production, he shows how to do a lot with a little. Unfortunately, Fugard’s dialogue is too often heavy-handed. “The playwright can’t resist telling us how their violent encounter symbolizes his country’s crisis.”
Yet there are moments of great subtlety, said Steven Leigh Morris in the LA Weekly. In one scene, Lionel takes a gun he drew to protect himself and simply hands it over to his captors. “The transfer of weapon from white man to black, given both reluctantly and freely,” quietly encapsulates South Africa’s post-apartheid transfer of power. Fugard “remains a storyteller first and a moralist second,” however, and Victory is most memorable for its character studies. Through Lionel, he explores how those who work to achieve social progress suffer when society doesn’t live up to its end of the bargain. Through Freddie, “Fugard is making a severe dramatic inquiry into the unfettered rage that is the consequence” of promises left unfulfilled.
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