IT IS A golden moment in theatre when text, performers, designers and director come together with a cohesion so compelling that you are chilled to the very soul. Master Harold … and the Boys is arguably one of Athol Fugard’s darkest and best theatrical moments, that offers a foray into an autobiographical slice of time that is as mortifying as it is defining. If you grew up under the mantle of an oppressive social system, such as apartheid, regardless of your skin colour, this work will open scars, touch nerves and rekindle horrors. It’s very painful to watch, but it’s an unequivocal must-see. Directed by Warona Seane it is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 28 June 2025.

It takes you to a humble tea-room at the public swimming baths in St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth. It’s 1950. Apartheid values are newly in place. And Hally (Daniel Anderson) is the son of a Second World War veteran. His mother runs the establishment, which is staffed by two black men, Sam (Sello Maake Ka Ncube) and Willie (Lebohang Motaung). It’s raining. The ideological climate is blithely, obtusely, crudely racist and the foxtrot is one of the paths, for both men, that enables them to return to being grown up in a world coloured by infantilisation and racist legislation.  

Armed with a mop, a juke box and the dulcet tones of Nat King Cole, the story is one rich in dialogue and complicated by the things that were allowed to be said by a white child to a black adult in a terrifying time where race and power were considered synonymous. It is about the love and the shame and the hate that gets rolled into one messy stream of anger in the face of caring for a broken parent. And it is about the way in which a primal gesture can so sully a conversation that it annuls it. The denouement of this play is something you may know: you may have read the work. You may have seen it onstage. Many times. But when the denouement actually comes, in which the child turns to the adult with the baldest of racist tropes in his mouth, it hits you like a sucker punch. 

We’ve not yet seen Anderson onstage in a non-singing role, and this is a particularly complex one, but he gobbles it up whole, offering a Hally who is at once demure and cavalier, vulnerable and damaged, prickly and poisonous. We’ve seen both Ka Ncube and Motaung most recently together onstage in The Suit, but here, amidst the horror of an upside-down sense of power that is governed by skin colour and the difficult relationship with the almost-man-child of a white employer who knows what he wields with his white skin, the fabric of their performances is upped several notches. It’s hard to say that these three performers harmonise together, in the light of the dirty taste this play evokes in your mouth, but they do: yielding an understanding of empathy and values, anger and helplessness in a way that never becomes preachy.

When Master Harold debuted at the Market Theatre in 1983, it was banned before its first performance and then hastily unbanned when the Powers That Were realised who wrote it. Fugard was already well-established and deeply respected by then. Over 40 years later, it is still incredibly difficult to watch, but unstoppable; you may cover your mouth in horror, but your eyes and your beating heart cannot close themselves to the intensity of the work. This is a flawless rendition of arguably one of South Africa’s toughest period pieces with bits and shards that still sadly resonate today.  

Master Harold … and the Boys is written by Athol Fugard and directed by Warona Seone. Performed by Daniel Anderson, Sello Maake KaNcube and Lebohang Motaung, it features design by Wilhelm Disbergen (set, lighting and costumes); Corne Roodt and Verita Brand (set construction); Nadine Minnaar and Eloise Milward (scenic painting); is co-produced by Sello Maake Ka Ncube Foundation and Daphne Kuhn and stage managed by Regina Dube assisted by Melidah Thakadu, with technical management by Loftus Mohale assisted by Reggie Mathebe. It is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 28 June 2025.