When the Manhattan Theater Club pulled its upcoming production of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, the South African playwright Athol Fugard withdrew his play, The Captain’s Tiger, from that theater’s roster for this season, in protest. What irony! Fugard has in the past delivered some searingly beautiful plays  -- Master Harold and the Boys, The Road To Mecca and Valley Song -- all of which exposed in very humanand revealing ways the political problems of his native South Africa but The Captain’s Tiger is not up to his usual high standard. On the contrary, it is a self-indulgent autobiographical piece about the playwright at twenty getting a job as manservant ("tiger" in shiptalk) to the captain of a cargo ship and traveling the world.  While on board, he starts to write. While on shore, he loses his virginity. Not a particularly original story.  And so it is a conceit on the part of Fugard to threaten the Manhattan Theatre Club with the withdrawal of a piece that might have made a slight (very slight) radio play.  It certainly is not yet worthy of an Off-Broadway production.

The  book-lined set (are we supposed to believe that this is Fugard’s subconscious; it certainly does not look like a ship’s library) is spare, except for a table and chair at which Fugard, who plays himself, sits and writes.  He is visited there by his mother, as she looked in a photograph taken when she was very young .  The story of his parent’s courting  -- told too late in the two-hour evening for anyone to really care -- is almost touching and Fugard speaks of his relationship to his mother warmly.  As the mother, Felicity Jones’s jeune fille style and intermittent  attempts at a South African accent are irritating.

The third character to appear on stage is Donkeyman – that’s shiptalk for the guys who lift that bale and tote that barge – ably played by Tony Todd, an imposing figure by any standards who dominates every scene he is in.  Not just because he is at least head and shoulders taller than Fugard, and one would guess 100 lbs heavier -- he is after all supposed to be a Zulu from Kenya.  His basso profundo voice fills the space and in spite of his size, his movements are balletic.  Fugard too moves with grace but cannot compete with Todd’s stage presence.  Todd’s character, however, is supposed to be illiterate and so his dialogue is uttered in Swahili, pidgin’ English, and the occasional incongruous contemporary vernacular.

Privately, the Kennedy Center concedes that Fugard – who wrote, directed and acts in The Captain’s Tiger – is working on the piece and that the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production will be "reconceived" and that is good news.  Perhaps there is a play in there somewhere and what
Washington saw was still a draft.

LINKS OF INTEREST
CurtainUp's Review of Fugard's Valley Song