Valley Song

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, But How Can Any Proper Po-Mo Love It?
Review: One simply must be dialectical about it, which is hard to do. On the one hand, it celebrates in a deeply human and comic way the "new South Africa" of the 1990s--a fragile creation that needed to be celebrated both at home and abroad. And contrary to Fugard's harshest critics, he raises some difficult issues that he refuses to paper over completely (land reform and restitution, rural unemployment, the lingering effects of White privilege, etc). On the other hand, the play releases the tension of these problems in a syrup of sentimentality that, perhaps to your ironist's sense of horror, really does work its magic on audiences (present company included). So what the heck do you do with this play? I still don't know, in the big scheme of things. However, there are many smaller schemes that cause me no such difficulty. If you are interested in South African literature, I think you should feel obligated to read it. Ditto if your work takes you into the fields of political theatre. Perhaps the most exciting context in which to read this play would be to place it alongside our own country's history of sentimental/literary attempts to resist and 'work through' racism. Finally, the play can also be seen as taking place within the rhetorical space of "truth and reconciliation," a topic that embraces an exciting range of literature from Eastern Europe to South America.

Rating:
Summary: A moving exploration of the landscape of the human heart.
Review: With the blight of apartheid lifted from South Africa, Athol Fugard, that nation's dominant voice in the theater, turns toward a quieter, more introspective story. It is daring in its simplicity, and absolutely shattering in its emotional impact. Its lovely, rural musings on hope, despair, and growth resonate far beyond the fields the action inhabits. There is an excellent framing device of an author (meant to represent Fugard, himself) in whose perceptual inadequacies we find a mirror for our own. Highly recommended.