The Train Driver
Athol Fugard shows no sign of slowing down in his fifty years as a South African political playwright. Indeed, the last decade has seen a flurry of new plays at Fugard’s U.S. home at the Fountain Theatre, a stage he said in a recent LA Times article, “that puts people in touch with the world.”
His latest play, inspired by a newspaper article of a South African mother who took her life and the lives of her three children by stepping in front of an oncoming train is a slight departure from his other works—immediately arresting and personal on a brooding, intimate scale. Told from the point of view of an engineer helpless to stop his train before striking a mother with her infant, is, by Fugard’s own admission, “The most important play” he’s written. It’s a difficult assertion given the sheer number of his notable works, easily delineated in the political upsets from apartheid and post-apartheid that figure largely in his plays. At the very least, The Train Driver is Fugard’s finest.
There are supernatural elements subtly suggested throughout, not unlike Conor McPherson’s “Shining City” which also premiered at the Fountain last year. But Fugard doesn’t shackle the play with ghost story trappings. Rather, he relies on the setting and the desperation of a man driven by guilt to the brink of madness to imbue a haunting elegance to a story about redemption and responsibility. The play is deceptively simple, but embedded in the psychological drama are a stratum of social, class and race issues that rise up in the heated conflicts between gravedigger Simon (Adolphus Ward) and the unwitting train driver, Roelf (Morlan Higgins).
Unable to accept the consequences of that tragic day, Roelf goes to the cemetery in search of the mother and her child’s grave—hoping to make amends and confront his crippling guilt. He discovers that the unnamed woman he calls, “Red Doek” for the red headscarf she wore, went unclaimed in the mortuary, relegated to an unmarked grave in a cemetery for the indigent known as “The Place For Those Who Have No Name.” This final affront on a victim of seemingly hopeless circumstances ignites further shame and guilt in Roelf as well as frustration and bitterness in the face of so much indifference.
Simon, for his part, calmly challenges Roelf with a wisdom tempered by duty and acceptance. Begrudgingly offering the crazed train driver his humble shanty for the night as they search by day for a grave too impossible to find, he acts as a sort of ear to Roelf’s confessions and contempt. Forced to reconcile some understanding in each other’s motives, the men discover some common ground between their divergent perspectives. Simon’s empathy is slow to come, distrusting of the stranger’s intent on finding an unclaimed woman, but by the play’s end, he feels somewhat responsible for Roelf, much in the same way Roelf feels for Red Doek.
Fugard makes an interesting and effective choice in telling the play from Roelf’s point of view, instead of the events that led to Red Doek’s fatal decision—evidenced even further by the unceremonious burial. It would not be surprising if Fugard revisited this character later, much like “Coming Home” to his “Valley Song.” Through Roelf, however, Fugard channels his own sense of ownership to South Africans and his reconciliation with the harsh realities post-apartheid. He says of the play, “It deals with my own inherent blindness and guilt as a white South African,” and director Stephen Sachs calls it “an awakening” when a man sees things as they really are, with open eyes.
Fugard pivots between the deeply personal, while still creating epic flourishes, reminiscent of Greek tragedy. The Oedipal symbolism is hard to miss in the broadest of terms. Simon’s sweetly mournful lamentation to the dead typifies Fugard’s adroit interweaving of song in his narratives with echoes of the Greek chorus.
The two-hander play relies mightily on the shoulders of its Fugard-experienced cast, and what a triumph! Adolphus Ward and Morlan Higgins perfectly compliment each other’s characters with an electric and tense chemistry that provides necessary suspense in an otherwise distilled story. Ward magically charms the audience, and while most of the dialogue is Roelf’s venting monologues, Ward’s physical reactions and contemplation are clear and felt. Higgins runs the gamut of emotions without a misstep and finds humor in the bleak, somewhat arrogant diatribes.
Stephen Sachs longstanding relationship directing Fugard’s works reveals an instinctual understanding of the playwright’s vision. Using the intimate, yet intricately detailed set designed by Jeff McLaughlin as a third character with the unmarked graves piled with rocks and debris, Sachs doesn’t complicate the staging with unnecessary direction. Fugard’s words are motivation enough, and Sachs expertise with the play’s subtext keeps a nicely varied pace without sacrificing crucial foreshadowing moments.
Ken Booth’s lighting design fails to disappoint. His warm, earthy tones in Simon’s tiny shack glowing from behind a scrim offer a cozy luminance and his talent for time of day is unmatched.
To call one of Fugard’s plays more important than another is like saying Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is more important than “The Crucible” or “My Three Sons.” Like these, Fugard’s works are all-important, vital and relevant to the place, the history, the people and the world. Notwithstanding my lack of faith in writers judging their own works, Fugard’s “The Train Driver” is a masterful work by a master playwright, confident and unerring. With this, the difference may only be in how closely connected he is to the page and what we see on stage.
“The Train Driver”
Runs through Dec 12
Thurs, Fri, Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 2pm
The Fountain Theatre
5060 Fountain Avenue
LA, CA 90029
(Fountain at Normandie)
PH: 323-663-1525
www.FountainTheatre.com
Secure on-site parking $5