Athol Fugard claims always to have been a storyteller rather than a political dramatist. But, just as his early magnificent work with John Kani and Winston Ntshona exposed the moral deformities of apartheid to a wider world, so this latest hour-long play is inescapably political. The only sadness is that it reveals the limitations of Fugard's brand of paternalistic liberalism.
Dramatically, the situation could hardly be simpler. Two young blacks, the gangsterish Freddie and his accomplice Vicky, are caught burgling a house in South Africa's Karoo desert. To complicate matters, Vicky's late mother was once a trusted servant of the widowed householder, Lionel. So when Lionel unexpectedly returns and finds his book-lined study ransacked, he is reduced to despair. Reminding Vicky that she was named after Nelson Mandela's victorious walk to freedom, he sees in her the extinction of his liberal hopes. So although he seeks to sever Vicky from her predatory companion, he knows that his cause is doomed.
Fugard is not uncritical of Lionel: for all his pious plans of furthering Vicky's education, he has never acknowledged her life with a drunkenly abusive father. But the weakness of the play is that, emotionally, it sees everything from Lionel's viewpoint. There is something deeply patronising about Lionel's claim that his late wife was a "friend" of Vicky's mum: as Tony Kushner's Caroline or Change reminded us, there can be no true friendship where there is economic subservience.
Cordelia Monsey's production for the Peter Hall Company is well played. Richard Johnson catches exactly the pathos of the desiccated Lionel as he views the destruction of his dream of a better South Africa. Pippa Bennett-Warner conveys the contradictions of Vicky who, even in the act of burglary, is haunted by fears of divine retribution. And Reece Ritchie does all he can with the underwritten role of the thuggish Freddie. But, without minimising the problems of post-apartheid South Africa, I find it difficult to endorse Fugard's blanket pessimism. In this play, he sees the country's young as either lawless hoodlums or impoverished victims. But, even if the benevolent liberalism in which Fugard matured is a thing of the past, it is still too early to yield to political despair.
· Until August 25. Box office: 01225 448844.
