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(More customer reviews)This 1984 filming of the most famous South African play preserves the most accomplished work of the adolescent Matthew Broderick and a heartbreaking performance by the great South African actor Zakes Mokae, who played Sam in the first production (at Yale in 1982).Although very, very talkie, and unabashedly a record of a stage work with three actors on a fairly simple set, the film is not visually static. There are many closeups, seemingly more often of reaction shots than of the speaker.
The play is set in 1950, two years after the enactment of apartheid restrictions in South Africa. The reduction of black adults to a status below that of a bratty, damaged white adolescent is central to the play.
One might wonder if the dismantling of apartheid makes this drama any less compelling. Seeing it both onstage and on video last week, I would answer: not at all. Though I knew what was coming, it still packed quite a punch. The situation of an economically privileged youth being parented by servants is not at all unique to South Africa of apartheid times. Indeed, the play could have been set in the American South of the same time with no change other than making the tea-shop a café. The emotional dynamics of the relationships do not even require racial differences between the boss's son and the workers, though some of the particular force of the last half hour rests on the racism institutionalized by apartheid.
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