Visceral vision of a new South Africa

Big Boys

Warehouse, Croydon

CHARLES J Fourie has written 36 plays in his prolific career, but this is the first to be staged in this country. When it was premiered in his native South Africa in 1989, it cleaned up on the awards front. Comparisons with Athol Fugard - the granddaddy of South African theatre - are inevitable, and indeed that towering presence lurks behind this drama in which black meets white at close quarters during the final years of apartheid.

The rural police station setting is a microcosm of a new South Africa that the characters can, at this point, only dream of.

We have a jail encounter between 15-year-old Solomon, who has undergone three months of torture for his association with "revolutionaries", and Daniel, 18, a spoilt rich kid who has stolen his father's Porsche and been arrested for drink driving.

Familiarity between these two rebels - one with a cause and one without - breeds understanding rather than contempt. Adrian Hughes's Daniel softens from the arrogant pose borne of insecurity, and recent Rada graduate Sibusiso Mamba gives Solomon grace and quiet humour. Their equality as human beings is neatly, if crudely, depicted as both men use their cell's open toilet: both make a stink.

Fourie is perhaps more visceral and less poetic than Fugard, but he also shows the dehumanising nature of apartheid on both sides of the divide: the black police constable (Ian Harry) is forced to torture his own - electricity applied to the genitals being one of the more horrific ruses - while the white sergeant, (Philip Rham) who gets him into the town rugby team, is the very model of a macho racist, though underneath he acknowledges the error of his ways.

This is potentially absorbing stuff; but the impact of Jeremy Bond's crepuscular production is dulled by a tendency to dwell on too many meaningful silences rather than keep the action going, and there is some awkward, sluggish staging.

Fourie is a welcome addition to the body of South African work seen here this year, but, as with the recent revival of Fugard's The Island, the power of plays about the bad old days is considerably diminished by our knowledge of the new regime.

Until 21 July. Box office: 020 8680 4060.

Copyright 2002
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