A 90-minute slog up to a dazzling peak: ‘Master Harold’… and the boys reviewed

Athol Fugard likes to dump his characters in settings with no dramatic thrust or tension. A prison yard is a favourite. He specialises in bored, talkative characters who squirt the time away swapping memories and indulging in bursts of creative play-acting. It’s dull to watch but good fun to perform. Thesps love to step out of character and road-test a range of fictional personalities.

‘Master Harold’… and the boys is classic Fugard. We’re in an empty restaurant in South Africa in 1950. Lunch service has ended. Two waiters twiddle away the afternoon discussing sex, ballroom dancing and beating women (as if this were a standard feature of male behaviour). Enter the boss’s school-age son, Hally, whom both waiters know well. Much chitchat and reminiscence follow. The waiters dip into Hally’s school-books and invite him to discuss mathematics, the works of Shakespeare, the historical concept of ‘the man of magnitude’ and other intellectual topics such as the precise definition of art.