Africa is a Country

Charles Isherwood in the New York Times reviews John Kani and Winston Ntshona in Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Banzi is Dead, a play they first brought to New York City in 1974:

“Sizwe Banzi” was always more than agitprop. Developed through improvisation, its structure is loose and offhanded. Pointed observations about the treatment of blacks in South Africa come only as the meaningful climax of an evening that begins genially and informally, like a cozy chat between intimates, and then develops into a comedy about two men who stumble across a corpse during a boozy evening. Sobering up at home, they decide to turn the dead man into an unwitting tool of rebellion against crippling government regulations.

I am seeing it next Friday night.

Full review here.