Athol Fugard is regarded as a theatrical titan but I usually need a microscope to find any trace of greatness in his work. The Island is set in a South African prison camp in the 1960s. Two banged-up lags, John and Winston, are toiling in the noonday heat. The governor torments them with a Kafka-esque prank. They’re placed at opposite ends of a sandpit and given shovels and wheelbarrows. Each must amass a dune of gravel, which his colleague is forced to deplete. This backbreaking futility is supposed to grind their spirits into nothing. It fails. Released from punishment at sundown, they retreat to their cells where they express themselves with abandon.
They amuse each other with frolicsome monologues. They swap reminiscences about good old chums from home. They discuss great shows they’ve seen at the neighbourhood theatre. So keen are they on drama that they’re rehearsing Sophocles’ Antigone for a forthcoming production in the camp. (Yes, they had am-dram in South African prisons. Ex-cons supplied the evidence on which Fugard based his play.) The two lags bicker about the allocation of roles. Neither wants to play Antigone for fear of being ridiculed as effeminate. Much of this banter is lightweight and self-involved, and there’s no dramatic conflict because the characters are bosom pals and their freedom of action is severely limited.
Slowly — and everything in the play moves at a larval pace – we discover why the men wound up in the slammer. They burned their ID passes in front of a police station. Sentence: ten years. But hope glimmers on the horizon. John’s lawyers are mounting an appeal, and when he learns that his release is imminent, both characters are devastated. Winston is consumed with envy while John is beset with guilt and remorse.
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