, a pair of Black political prisoners endure hard labor while endeavoring to mount a two-man version of Sophocles’s for their fellow inmates. Written by Athol Fugard, a white South African whose best-known works opposed apartheid, and actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who originally portrayed the prisoners, the play is set on Robben Island, the infamous prison compound where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated at the time. It alternates between scenes of the two, in which the title character is punished for refusing to comply with her uncle Creon’s unjust laws.
