The Royal National Theatre & Market Theatre Johannesburg production of “The Island”, which had an acclaimed season at the National in the Spring of 2000, has now returned to London at the Old Vic Theatre for a limited season. I missed the play in 2000 so was pleased to catch it this time round, and what an inspiring and poignant drama it is.

“The Island”, which premiered in 1973, was wrote by Athol Fugard and its two actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, the same two actors that starred in the play 28 years ago. It was written as a tribute to the men and women who were imprisoned for taking part in the fight for a free and democratic South Africa.

The play is set in the notorious Robbin Island prison where political prisoners were kept in harsh conditions. Winston and John have been sharing a cell for nearly 3 years. They survive the harsh conditions through a strong bond of friendship and by using fantasy games to escape the austere reality of their situation. However, when John is told he is to be released within 3 months, he is ecstatic but at the same time is cautious in case the officials are playing games with him to try and ‘make him mad’. Winston on the other hand becomes jealous and resentful at the thought of his friends reprieve.

John Kani and Winston Ntshona perform magnificently. They are particularly outstanding at the beginning of the play when they perform a mime of the prisoners' forced labour.

Within the play, the two prisoners act out a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone. King Creon is presented as a caricature of the apartheid state of South Africa, in which the official view is that ‘all’ the citizens are ‘happy and fat’ with their positions in society and that the law is there to protect them from ‘liberals’ and ‘terrorists’. Antigone, the sister who gives her ‘disgraced’ brother a decent burial, even through it is has been forbidden, is a fitting figure for the black South African, who against all the odds, seek to keep their dignity despite the vicious demands of a corrupt state.

The play has again been well received by the popular press....RHODA KOENIG for THE INDEPENDENT says, “With the passing of apartheid, The Island remains powerful enough to stand as a generic drama of injustice.” NICHOLAS DE JONGH for THE EVENING STANDARD describes it as a “remarkable production”. And goes to say it has a “fierce emotional impact.” DOMINIC CAVENDISH for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says, "Through its unadorned, bare-bones playing style, and the poignant rapport of its two stars...the production makes the prisoners' experiences seem vividly of-the-moment as well as universal in implication." THE DAILY MAIL says, " The quality of acting is unforced, seamless and unbearably moving."

Lasting 1 hour 30 minutes without an interval this is a passionate and uplifting drama of survival and certainly well worth seeing.

(Darren Dalglish)

Links to full reviews from newspapers...

The Independent
Evening Standard
Daily Telegraph

Next review by Tom Keatinge
tomkeatinge@hotmail.com
March 2002

The Island, currently playing at the Old Vic, is making its second visit to London, having had its international première here in London at the Royal Court in 1973. Whilst the South African background against which The Island is set is very different today than it was thirty years ago, the importance of the piece is certainly not diminished – indeed it is arguably heightened as it illustrates how little the world has learnt during the intervening years. As co-writer and actor John Kani writes in the programme, “The Island addresses itself to any corner of the world where the human spirit is being oppressed, where people sit in jail because of their fight for human dignity, for freedom”. And so it is that this play, a collective creation by two young actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and the “white” South African writer Athol Fugard, addresses itself to the small, infamous island in the waters off Cape Town, in the shadow of Table Mountain – Robben Island, formerly home of some of Southern Africa’s most famous names: Sisulu, Mbeki, Mandela, Biko.

The passing of the years has in no way diminished the passion with which Kani and Ntshona play their parts. The opening scene of hard, worthless labour is delivered with a ferocity that can only live on in the memory if the reality had been personal and truly awful. Kani and Ntshona heave sand from one pointless pile to another, only for it to be returned whence it came in a mime that must be drawn from personal experience. Then there is the depiction of their cell life, the way in which they sought to entertain themselves, the fear and terror with which they viewed their guards, and the insights into their former lives, their life outside prison, and the route they had taken to incarceration. Yet within all the gloom and anger of such torture, there is time for some levity, some light relief. The hopeless attempts by Ntshona to concentrate on learning the story of Antigone amuse us, but yet even then, the message behind their concert performance tells a more sinister story, and offers an insight into the mission that Kani and Ntshona had set themselves at that time in real life, that of portraying the persecution they and their brothers suffered at the hands apartheid persecution.

I have been lucky enough to visit what remains of the Robben Island penitentiary, where visitors are guided round by former inmates and guards that have taken it upon themselves to make sure that the stories of what occurred on The Island are not forgotten, not allowed to fade. They call it the University of Life, from which some of Africa’s greatest statesmen and reformers have graduated. In the same vein, though its original subject is now no more, The Island is an important work that is as valuable in its message today as it was in its objectives thirty years ago.

Tom Keatinge
tomkeatinge@hotmail.com
Tom Keatinge Web site