Athol Fugard and Joseph Conrad (one cent)

Not a likely combination, but having seen Fugard's riveting play "My Children, My Africa" last night at the Studio, I need to draw the comparison.

In "Under Western Eyes", we saw Mazurov, trying to remain an innocent, caught in a situation where the revolutionaries thought he was a revolutionary, and the conservatives thought him a conservative. And each had power to keep him in line. A dictatorial government and an increasingly monolithic revolutionary movement.

"My Children, My Africa" takes place in South Africa in the 1980s, when apartheid was still the law of the land, but where chinks in its armor began to appear on all sides. The blacks became more prone to dissent and rebellion, and some of the whites more open to reconciliation. It is in this situation that young, attractive, charismatic, intellectual Thami Mbikwana finds himself caught in the middle. A high schooler with academic skills who could easily be a bridge to an integrated society, who loves English poetry, who gets along with a white debate partner (an unusual circumstance to be sure) enters into a revolt against every thing white, and tear down the entire society that has affected his race so badly.

Does he want to? Or is community forcing him to? Does he have no choice? Or has he made a choice?

In many ways, the situations are not very different in that the central character is an individual whose freedom is circumscribed by circumstance.

Both the book and the play are quite heavy (the play is better written). Oh, for the days of Red Skelton's "Confederate Yankee", a delightful old comedy about a hapless individual who is recruited by both sides during the civil war and who, because of his general befuddlement, comes through unscathed.