THEATER REVIEW
Rites of passage

Athol Fugard's new drama Exits and Entrances pays homage to the playwright's muse and provides a forum for some intense self-examination.

by Jack Zink
Sun-Sentinel Theater Writer
Posted December 14 2005

 
Athol Fugard's new two-character drama Exits and Entrances is one of those rare theatrical experiences where memory, longing and inspiration fuse into a bright light of discovery.

Fugard, the highly respected South African playwright well known for his plays exposing the shame of apartheid, has written a simple, breathtaking paean to the artistic muses -- one especially -- that inspired him.

Exits and Entrances has already and accurately been described as Fugard's version of The Dresser or A Life in the Theater. There's also more than a whiff of the novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Yet the comparisons are ultimately meaningless because the author has totally reframed every reference, including some ageless dramatic speeches by Sophocles and Shakespeare.

Both autobiography and history, Exits and Entrances concerns a young, aspiring playwright (William Dennis Hurley, representing Fugard) and Andre Huguenet (Morlan Higgins), an aging, celebrated actor once revered as the Laurence Olivier of South Africa. We see them first in 1956 when the playwright is Andre's dresser, and playing a small role, in a production of Oedipus Rex. Later, in 1961, the writer pays a visit backstage to congratulate the star on a performance in a political drama, The Prisoner, loosely based on jailed Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty.

That year also marks Fugard's first success as a playwright with The Blood Knot, the founding of the Independent Republic of South Africa and Huguenet's death. Fugard spins a theatrical metaphor on those rites of passage in the form of a stage valentine to his mentor. An intimate, 90-minute inside-show-biz drama with only ripples of Fugard's political and social concerns, the play is a marvelous examination of the human spirit, and a fantasyland for actors up to the challenge.

These are coached in Afrikaans accents, directed with compassion by Stephen Sachs and fueled by something important within themselves as well as the play. Exits and Entrances, with this same director and cast, had its world premiere in the spring of 2004 at the Fountain Theatre, a 78-seat space in Los Angeles. It went on to win the L.A. Drama Critics Award for best play and the Ovation Award for best premiere play. Sachs won both as best director. Higgins, as the egotistical stage ham Andre, became the first actor in Southern California history to win every regional best-actor award, a total of seven. Hurley won two as featured actor.

The three are reunited with new scenery and lighting by Florida Stage designer Richard Crowell, plus costumes and sound based on the Fountain production's designs. Crowell's versatile and attractive combinations move the action fluidly back and forth between dressing room and stage, with occasional sojourns into the imagination.

Higgins' mesmerizing performance exposes the comically egotistical actor backstage and the larger-than life star in action. But the coup de grace is the character's growth and transformation.

Andre, the young playwright surmises, faces "the calamity of too long a life," outliving one's importance. Behind that theme, one senses that Fugard, 72, is using the play to explore the same themes in himself.

Higgins' recitation of the priestly self-confession from The Prisoner is impressive enough following intermission, but his closing "To be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet is among the most compelling renditions these ears have ever heard.