Athol Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play is set in St George’s Park Tea Room, Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1950. On a long rainy afternoon, the two employees Sam and Willie practice their steps for the finals of the ballroom dancing championship. It lifts their spirits out of the mundane.
Teenager Hally arrives from school to hang out in his parents’ tearoom. These two men have been Hally’s closest friends and unlikely mentors for his whole life. But it is apartheid era South Africa: when he turns on them, he becomes Master Harold, and they, broken-hearted, are the boys. Produced at the National Theatre in 2019, Roy Alexander Weise
directed Lucian Msamati as Sam and Hammed Animashuan
as Willie.
