Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005

MIAMI HERALD

THEATER REVIEW
Fine acting enhances drama

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN cdolen@herald.com

The old invariably gives way to the new, though rarely without some pain. In Athol Fugard's searing dramas, that has most often meant stories in which the brutality of apartheid in his native South Africa is transformed -- first in dreams, then in reality -- to a more equitable political system.

Fugard's Exits and Entrances is a less political, far more personal play. The man who dared to have black and white actors together onstage during apartheid now lives in California. Apartheid, the system that cruelly oppressed South Africa's black majority for so many years, ended in 1990. And Fugard, now 73, is looking back dramatically on his life in art.

Now at Florida Stage in Manalapan, this production of Exits and Entrances is a reprise of its 2004 debut production at the tiny Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles.

That company's co-artistic director, Stephen Sachs, the first person other than the playwright to direct a Fugard world premiere, has restaged it in Florida Stage's slightly larger (but still quite intimate) space. Its original actors -- Morlan Higgins as André, a South African actor in the late autumn of his career, and William Dennis Hurley as a young playwright modeled on Fugard -- have returned to the roles that won them such acclaim.

The result is amusing, moving, highly theatrical and, at times, devastating.

Exits and Entrances is, like Ronald Harwood's The Dresser and David Mamet's A Life in the Theater, a backstage play about the glories and sacrifices of a long theater career. It is inspired by -- and a tribute to -- the young Fugard's friendship with André Huguenet, a once-famous Afrikaner actor who toured the country in British comedies and classical dramas.

Set near the beginning of a career that would, through plays like Blood Knot, Master Harold . . . and the boys and The Road to Mecca, make Fugard one of the world's most important playwrights, Exits and Entrances is a young man's contemplation of an older one. Learning of his friend's death, the playwright thinks back to 1956 and Cape Town, when he served as a ''dogsbody'' (aka personal assistant) and played a small part opposite André in Oedipus the King.

As André prepares to go on in the title role, the young man helps him prepare, fetching pieces of his costume, cinching in the actor's protruding belly, making hot water with honey and lemon to pamper his golden throat. It feels like eavesdropping on a private ritual, one in which André shows his nerves and shares his fears, along with the childhood torments that led a gay man from a religious, judgmental family to the sanctuary of the stage.

The contrast between the two men is pointed. André is finishing a career that playwrights like his young friend will very soon render old-fashioned. The playwright, making his entrance into an important career, will marry, become a father, find joy in family and purpose in reflecting the myriad untold stories of his divided country. The actor, who has found a home only upon the stage, is a lonely relic about to make his exit.

Part of the richness of Exits and Entrances lies in Fugard's incorporation of speeches from Oedipus, Hamlet and, especially, Bridget Boland's The Prisoner, speeches that allow Higgins' André to show off, show growth and underscore the character's journey toward humility, insight and truth.

There is nothing especially earth-shattering about Exits and Entrances, nothing like the fall of a dehumanizing political system in a damaged country. But thanks to the passionate performances of Higgins and Hurley, and to Fugard's grace and ruminative insight, the play is both entrancing and heart-breaking.

Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.