"Master Harold"...and the boys

“Master Harold”…and the boys was written in 1982 by South African playwright Athol Fugard, who is also an actor and director. The play takes place in 1950 in South Africa during the apartheid era. The entire play occurs in a café owned by the mother of Hally, a 17 year old white boy.

The play begins with two black waiters, Sam and Willie, who work in the café. Sam and Willie are practicing for a big ballroom dancing competition, and Sam coaches Willie on his technique. Hally, otherwise known as the titular Harold, walks in after a day at school. Immediately we get a sense of his relationship with the two black men; Willie calls him “Master Harold” and is less conversational with him, while Sam almost treats Hally as if he was an equal. Hally and Sam begin to have a conversation which shows that Sam is on a similar intellectual level as Hally. As the conversation turns from education to reminiscing about past memories, we get a sense that Hally’s relationship with Sam and Willie is more than just two employees that he grew up with. They are more like family to him, more like family than his blood relations, as we see in his phone conversations with his mother.

The turning point for me was the scene after the memory of the kite flying. Hally has a conversation on the phone with his mother about his crippled, alcoholic father coming home from the hospital. Even though we never hear the other end of the conversation, we get the sense that Hally is embarrassed, horrified, and resentful of his father. He tries to hide his feelings, but we know that he is hurt and angry by the impending arrival of his father. He becomes more cynical and irritable, until Sam and Willie try to help him write his essay on ballroom dancing. At this point, the essay about the beauty of the ballroom floor being “a world without collisions” becomes a metaphor for their own lives; they all envision a world where conflict and hatred no longer exist because they are all “champions” of the dance. Sadly, this emotional moment is quickly cut short with the news that Hally’s father is on his way home. Hally, distressed and enraged by the news, takes his anger out on Sam and Willie, destroying his relationship with them. He uses his racial superiority to insult and degrade them, all because he cannot deal with the painful memories of his father’s personality.

The last few pages of the play are disturbing and heartbreaking. This play was written before the end of apartheid, and it shows how much prejudice and segregation were ingrained in South African society. Hally disapproves of his father's actions, but is conflicted about their relationship; he knows that he should love and follow his father, but his hatred for his father’s behavior causes him to lash out at the two people who he is closest to, and to the man he looks up to as a surrogate father-figure: Sam. I think the way that Sam deals with Hally’s insults is commendable, since he could have been fired in another circumstance. At the end, he is desperate to repair the damage that has been done, but it is only up to Hally to decide what to do. I know there is a movie of this play that was released recently, so it will be interesting to see how they play out these relationships in a post-apartheid world. All in all, a powerful and recommended read.