Master Harold and the Boys

Written by Athol Fugard

Narrated by Leon Addison Brown, Keith David and Bobby Steggert

Academy-Award winner Athol Fugard, one of theatre's most acclaimed playwrights, finds humor and heartbreak in the friendship of Harold, a 17-year old white boy in 1950's South Africa, and the two middle aged black servants who raised him. Racism unexpectedly shatters Harold's childhood and friendships in this absorbing, affecting coming of age play.

The play, initially banned from production in South Africa, is a Drama Desk Award winner for Outstanding New Play.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Leon Addison Brown, Keith David and Bobby Steggert.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.A. Theatre Works
• Release date: Feb 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781580819695

Athol Fugard

Athol Fugard is a South African playwright and occasional director and actor who actively critized the Apartheid system through his work. He worked with actors such as Zakes Mokae and John Kani and soon gained international recognition for his plays. His fifty years of playwriting include The Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Master Harold ... and the Boys, The Road to Mecca and The Train Driver. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2011. The film based on his novel, Tsotsi, won an Oscar for best foreign film.

Reviews for Master Harold and the Boys

[bravenew1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Although the play is dealing with a particular time period in South Africa, the lessons are universal. The dream is that we will all dance through life without bumping into each other and causing each other suffering. Do that and you win the cup. There are lessons all around us if we only have the perspective to listen.

[paulafonseca530b · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Audience: Grade 9 and UpSouth Africa, 1950. Sam and Willie, black men in their mid-forties, are working at a tearoom. The men are practicing for an upcoming ballroom competition when Harry, the white seventeen-year-old son of the owners, arrives from school. Harry and Sam engage in intellectual sparing as they discuss men of magnitude. The lively conversation turns into reminiscing as Sam remembers his first interactions with Harry. The tone is friendly until Harry receives news that his father is leaving the hospital to return home. Harry’s mood turns sour, and he takes his anger out on Sam and Willie. The angrier Harry gets, the uglier his behavior becomes, and Sam and Willie are faced with humiliation as Harry repeats his father’s language of the apartheid. A line is crossed that will forever change Harry and Sam’s relationship. Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the Boys is a one-act play that exposes the injustices of the apartheid system. The grown men know that standing up to the teenager’s humiliation would mean paying a price too high that neither one can afford. It is hard not to cringe when Harry devolves into a bigot and repeats the words of his father to subjugate Sam and Willie. The tearoom becomes a microcosm of a country where policy dictated one’s place in society based on one’s skin color. The play is a study in power—who has it and who does not, and the implications to interpersonal relationships. Harry sees himself as Sam’s mentor, therefore in power; when Sam seeks to dissuade Harry from speaking poorly of his father, Sam’s reaction is to dig deep into the discourse of bigotry to put Sam back in his place. The play offers rich material for discussions about racism, bigotry, power, and human relations.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Master Harold" and the boys is a short play that has an immense impact upon first reading. The playwright Athol Fugard manages to imagine a relationship between a boy and two Black servants in early 1950s in South Africa and make it become a universal experience that continues to resonate with readers in the Twenty-first century. I was impressed with the economy of words that were used to express multiple levels of feeling and meaning throughout the play. The culture of England, long the colonial power in this country, is also ever present in language and simple things such the names of towns.The basic story is a simple tale of a boy, Hal, on the verge of manhood struggling with his education and his relationship both with his friends, the Black servants Sam and Willie, and his father who is nearing the end of what must have been a tyrannical patriarchy. Hal, who is "Master Harold" to Willie and plain Hally to Sam and everyone else, struggles through the issues of his relationships and what they mean until the difficulties with his father overtake him and he lashes out at the Black servants, reminding the reader that this is the era of apartheid and this is South Africa. One of the most powerful metaphors is that of the dance that is used from the opening of the play and culminates in a beautiful moment as the linchpin for transcendent beauty and the meaning of art. The day ends with tentative attempts at reconciliation, but we are left wondering whether the next day will bring a new level of maturity and hope for the master and his boys or more of the same tensions that make compassionate friendship crumble in this moving drama.

[deirdreharris · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seventeen-year old Hally, also known as Master Harold, get into trouble with Sam and Willie two black men who work for his family, due to the frustration and fear he feels about his crippled and alcoholic father getting out of the hospital. This play has a mature subject matter about race relations in South Africa. It could be used to compare aspects of apartheid with segregation in the United States in the classroom.