Master Harold...and the Boys

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MASTER HAROLD...and the boys is a short play by Athol Fugard, taking place in South Africa during the apartheid era. It was first produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1982. The production subsequently played 344 performances on Broadway, with Lonny Price, Danny Glover, and Zakes Mokae, and since then has been presented worldwide. It was banned by the South African government.

1 Setting
2 Characters
3 Awards
4 Bibliography

[edit] Setting

A tea room (cafe) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in the year 1950.

[edit] Characters

Harold (Hally), a seventeen year old white boy

Sam, a 45 year old black waiter in the tea room

Willie, a black waiter in the tea room in his mid forties

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It's a rainy Thursday in Port Elizabeth, so there are no customers at the tea room where Sam and Willie work as waiters. Since they're not busy, Sam and Willie, both middle aged, are practicing ballroom steps in preparation for a major competition. Sam is quickly characterized as being the more intelligent and worldly of the two. When Willie, in broken English, describes his ballroom partner as lacking enthusiasm, Sam correctly diagnoses the problem: Willie beats her if she doesn't know the steps.

Seventeen year old Hally, a cerebral white boy whose family owns the tea room, arrives from school. Hally has known the two waiters all his life, and is on very familiar terms with both. Sam is on an equal intellectual footing with Hally, and addresses Hally by his first name. They carry on lengthy, intelligent conversations on a variety of subjects. Hally respects Sam, and sometimes seems to regard him as a father figure. Willie, for his part, always calls the white boy "Master Harold," and Hally regards him more as a child than as an equal.

The conversation veers around wildly and then turns to Hally's 500-word English composition. The play reaches an emotional apex as the beauty of the ballroom dancing floor ("a world without collisions") is used as a transcendent metaphor for life and a creative paper topic... But almost immediately despair returns: Hally's tyrannical father has been in the hospital recently, undergoing medical complications due to the leg he lost in World War II, but it appears that today he is coming home. Hally, utterly distraught with this news, unleashes years of anger and pain on his two black friends, creating possibly-permanent rifts in his relationship with Sam, who promises not to call him anything but "Master Harold" (though in the final confronation betwean Hally and Sam, Sam does call Hally by his name). The play ends on this unhappy note, though Willie, at least, has resolved not to be such a tyrant when it comes to ballroom dancing.

The play is autobiographical. Fugard (full name Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard) was nicknamed Hally in his youth and the incident in which he spits in Sam's face actually happened. Fugard is reported to have said that all of his writing has come from a need to purge the shame he felt at the act.

Spoilers end here.

The play is known to be a work of Post-colonialism criticism, and is frequently cited as a depiction of how institutionalized racism, bigotry or hatred can become absorbed by those who live under it. It is also world-renowned for its sparse setting and design (its components are frequently described as "Three actors, one set and a black man's ass") and the sheer quality of its dialogue.

A 1985 made-for-television adaptation starred Matthew Broderick as Hally, Zakes Mokae as Sam, and John Kani as Willie.