Young Critics

Friends are defined as one attached to another by affection or esteem, but when Delaware Theatre Company puts on “Master Harold”… and the Boys, friends is defined as two men of color Sam and Willie and a younger white man Hally. “Master Harold”… and the Boys starts of in a tea shop called The St. George's Park Tea Room, on a rainy afternoon. It’s the 1950s in South Africa and the play opens with music and singing as one of the men works. This play touched me because it’s like stepping back into the past and seeing how no matter how you look or act that you have friends. Friends are supposed to lift you up and also help you when you need them the most and Athol Fugard presents friendship in the best light for the 1950s.

All you see as the lights slowly rise up is an older man behind the bar reading and a younger man working in the corner. The lighting and scenic designer, Michael Philippi, uses the spotlights perfectly when the youngest friend comes into the mix. He uses the phone a lot and the spotlights are used to show how he is the most important person right there. The lights fade in to start and slowly fade out to end the show. The scene is set with tables and a bar and just a floor. The costume designer, Murell Horton, made simple clean costumes. But you could tell that two of the men worked for the younger boy’s father and mother. Fabian Obispo made the sound flow throughout the theater and made the sounds very sharp and known. Also the music was perfect for the time period.

The playwright was very strong in the sense of the period, of having blacks and whites still being separated. Sam, Willie and Harry were all friends but Hally knew when to pull out the white card and trump over the two others. Kenajaun Bentley played Willie, the younger of the black men. He was young but he knew his place around Sam (the older black man). He played him so well because he knew when to stop messing around and knew when to work. DJ Howard played Sam, the older black man. Sam was a friend to Hally the whole time – closer than Willie was to him. When DJ Howard did his monologue about how he helped Hally all his life and has been his friend and that there is no reason why he is acting the way he is and saying the things he was saying about his father, it drew everyone deeper into the story. He played the part well because he knew how to play a black male who was friends with a white male, and how to react to him. Seamus Mulcahy played Hally, the only white male in this play. Hally had friends who were black and knew how to use them, but when Hally's mother called to talk to Hally about his father everyone got the impression that Hally did not need Sam and Willie anymore because they were black and Hally was dealing with another white person. When Seamus Mulcahy started to demand the other two men around, you could have dropped a feather and it would have made a noise. All three did an excellent job portraying this friendship in the 1950s.

The director, Richard Corley did an excellent job in making the audience feel that we were back in the 1950s seeing this story take place. He knew what he wanted to show in his play. I got the impression that he wanted the words in the play to be powerful even without reading the play. I believe he achieved it. Anyone who walked in could get the idea of what was going on. The staging made us feel that Hally felt that he was better than the other two because Willie seemed to always be on the outsides of the stage. The focus of the play seemed to be Sam and Hally. Hally had to make a choice about what to do about his fear – to make it come out or hide it. Richard Corley did an excellent job and made the right choices in how to make this story becoming more than words.