A Lesson from Aloes
Athol Fugard
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| Wendy vanden Heuvel & Victor Talmadge |
The early 1960s in South Africa was a time of increasing
police raids, township riots and brutal police reactions as well as unfair trials
and undeserved executions. At the same
time, the world began to awaken enough to the horrors of apartheid to declare
more and more boycotts and to debate at the United Nations how to deal with a
society where the native, majority blacks were treated as non-human beings by
the white minority leaders.
It is into this atmosphere of fear and frustration that
Athol Fugard places his A Lesson from
Aloes, now in a stunningly crafted production by Weathervane Productions at
Z Below. Premiering in 1980 when apartheid was still
the law but set in 1963 in the home of white Afrikaners, Piet and Gladys Benzuidenhout,
A Lesson from Aloes focuses on a
couple isolated in the island of their own abode for reasons to become clearer
in the play’s progression but reasons originating from Piet’s history of
anti-apartheid activism. We meet Piet
tending his outdoor garden of various aloe plants, a hobby he has taken up in
only the past six months, but whose several dozen specimens seem now to be the
main focus of his solitary life.
As his wife watches with mixed amusement and boredom, Piet
tries desperately to identify a newcomer to his mini-forest of thorned, puffy
plants – stubborn, sturdy survivors in the harsh South African environment of
sand, heat, and drought ... much like the plants’ caregiver himself. As he mutters about his unnamed friend,
Gladys asks with a dimpled smile but eyes a bit sad, “Are you talking to me or
to your aloe ... I’m never sure these days.”
Coupled with another remark made with huge sigh by Gladys that time is
“passing so slowly these days,” hints begin to mount that life is a struggle
not only for these plants, but for the inhabitants of this abode – or at least
for the observing, restless Gladys. “God
has not planted us in a tin pan” (like Piet has his aloes). “I want to live this life, not just survive,”
she says with both some despair and some grit of determination.
 |
| Wendy vanden Heuvel & Victor Talmadge |
But there is also some excitement in the air on this
particular day as the sun’s rays start their colorful journey to set (beautifully
documented through the projections design of Frédéric O. Boulay). After six months of no visitors, the couple
is expecting Piet’s best friend, Steve Daniels, to come for dinner with his
wife and four kids (one, the godson of Piet).
Preparations for an al fresco supper in the open patio floored by sand
ignite some spark and playfulness between the couple as they even dance in
between setting a festive table. With gusto,
the poem-quoting Piet searches for just the right Holmes, Dickens, or Blake
quote for the evening’s toast to welcome their guests.
A contagious energy and enthusiasm for life permeates Victor
Talmadge’s Piet as we get to know him in the opening minutes of the play. He literally bounces around the outdoor,
desert setting (one meticulously adorned by scenic designer Deb O), with Piet
having a spry, almost boy-like nature that belies his evident years of
sixty-plus.
The contrast between his zeal and the more sedate, cautious
Gladys becomes more and more stark, especially when she retreats to the
adjoining bedroom where the right hand of Wendy vanden Heuvel tremors ever so
slightly as she looks with some claustrophobic anxiety at the four walls around
her. Sitting at her desk to stare at a
mirror with a look of some inside fear, she
unlocks a drawer to take out a red leather diary and frantically to look
for somewhere else to hide it. We
realize that existence in their home of Algoa Park, Port Elizabeth is for at
Gladys not a safe, welcome haven – for reasons we will learn.
Tensions in the household mount as the shadows lengthen and scattered
wall lights take over the duty of the parting sun’s rays (thanks to the
outstanding lighting design of York Kennedy).
The Daniels family has not yet arrived as expected, with Gladys becoming
ever more upset, edgy, and prone to strike with a surprising venom at a still
calm, patiently waiting Piet.
When Piet reveals that this is actually the last time they
will see Steve and his family because his former activist partner (who has just
been released from six months in jail after being betrayed by some informer),
are immigrating to England, Gladys is full of longing envy, expressing her own
desire to leave the country. That wish is
in clear opposition to the obvious roots that Piet has planted in the country’s
troubled soil, a fact that seems tonight to grate ever more on Gladys as each
minute passes.
More reasons emerge for Gladys’ nervous anxiety and her
ever-more-pointed jabs at the mild-mannered, mostly non-responding Piet (with
both Ms. vanden Heuvel and Mr. Talmadge continuing to provide memorable
performances). A point-blank question dealing
with Steve’s arrest by a now emboldened Gladys to her quietly staring husband
electrifies the scene just as darkness fully sets in.
 |
| Adrian Roberts & Victor Talmadge |
But when Steve (Adrian Roberts) finally arrives late in
evening (sans family), the mood once again shifts to a joyful reunion and a
reenactment by the two friends of a past poetry slam, complete with
well-rehearsed actions that clearly they have done many times during nights
together over bottles of wine. That
reprise from the evening’s earlier mounting atmosphere of agitation is only
brief, as suspicions and accusations – once unspoken – now spill forth from
unlikely places, pitting husband and wife as well as friend and friend against
each other. The repercussions of the
unsuccessful battles that these two friends once fought for justice has scarred
all three in different ways, and each is about to seek a final escape route
from this land they love so much – even if that flight is simply into a meager,
dry garden of aloes.
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| Adrian Roberts, Wendy vanden Heuvel & Victor Talmadge |
Veteran director Timothy Near guides with astute grace,
nuanced gift, and emotional glow this equally veteran and much-talented cast of
three. She allows the rich script and
the astounding production elements of set, lighting, costume (Maggi Yule), and
sound (Cliff Caruthers) to work hand-in-hand with the ever-arresting spoken and
silent expressions of this cast, resulting in a production highly engaging,
challenging, and moving. Its two hours
(plus intermission) pass without notice of time as we watch the implications
that living in a country where freedom is denied has on both the oppressed
minority and on the supposedly free majority – two of the latter who quite
evidently suffer their own differing imprisonments of mind and soul.
Athol Fugard does not let us forget that however bad it is
for the Afrikaner sympathizer, friend, and activist, that person’s skin in the
end is still white – something Steve, no matter how much his native South
African means to him, cannot ever have as a possible refuge. The power of skin color is a reality, even
post-Apartheid, that makes this play still strikingly relevant – even and
especially in our own current country.
Not only has Weathervane Productions brought us a play that
instructs us of a time now past and the effects those days had on its
inhabitants of a land far away, the choice to stage Athol Fugard’s A Lesson from Aloes bears its own harsh
timeliness. How can we not draw
comparisons to the fact that every day those with darker skins are imprisoned
both in our inner cities and at our borders at alarming rates in our own land
of the so-called free?
Rating: 5 E
A Lesson from Aloes
continues through June 29, 2018, staged by Weathervane Productions at Z Below,
470 Florida Street, San Francisco.
Tickets are available at http://www.zspace.org/.
Photos by David Allen
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