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Summary: Best play I've ever read
Review: and I've read a LOT of plays. This one was nice, short, thought-provoking and great fun to read. The author makes good use of metaphors and symbolism. It is fascinating, angering, and very enjoyable. It talks about racism and prejudice, pride and freedom, in interesting and enlightening ways. My mother read it after I did (for school) and has since made all of her friends read it. Everyone should read it, or at least see it, to get a better understanding of racism in South Africa, and an appreciation for our freedoms here in America.
Rating: 
Summary: Driving Master Harold?
Review: Athol Fugard presents a well-written but ultimately frustrating play. The fact that parts of the play are autobiographical, mutes some of the frustration, in that,Fugard is sharing a personal experience in an effort to shed light on a South Africa that is in the process of legalizing its apartheid system. Sam and Willie are waiters in the St. George's Park Tea Room. Hally, the adolescent son of their white employers, is charged with supervising the two African men. While Hally believes is is keeping an eye on "the boys", Sam continues his long standing practice of attempting to guide and advise both Willie and Hally. Fugard skillful reveals the subtle ways in which Sam tries to deflect Hally's arrogance and focus Hally on his studies. But the all too familiar scene of Black characters being presented in the role of caretakers for white characters has been done to death. Fugard's treatment and the setting of the play do breath freshness into the situation, and Sam is drawn as too graceful a character to be compared to an Uncle Remus. But reading of two grown African men spending their lives nursemaiding the offspring of their employer/oppressor, as if they were on a Georgia plantation, and going out of their way to "save this child" from his family's dysfunction and his country's inherent racism becomes wearisome. For those that enjoy movies like Mississippi Burning, The Ghosts of Mississippi, or A Time To Kill, stories in which tales of racial conflict are told with white main characters and Black supporting characters serving as props, this play will likely prove appealling. For stories that focus on the perspective of the African and not the colonizer, I would suggest Ousmane Sembene's God's Bits of Wood, Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God, Ayi Kwei Armah's Two Thousand Seasons, Cheik Hamadou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure, or Haile Gerima's film Sankofa.
Rating:
Summary: Driving Master Harold?
Review: Athol Fugard presents a well-written but ultimately frustrating play. The fact that parts of the play are autobiographical, mutes some of the frustration, in that,Fugard is sharing a personal experience in an effort to shed light on a South Africa that is in the process of legalizing its apartheid system. Sam and Willie are waiters in the St. George's Park Tea Room. Hally, the adolescent son of their white employers, is charged with supervising the two African men. While Hally believes is is keeping an eye on "the boys", Sam continues his long standing practice of attempting to guide and advise both Willie and Hally. Fugard skillful reveals the subtle ways in which Sam tries to deflect Hally's arrogance and focus Hally on his studies. But the all too familiar scene of Black characters being presented in the role of caretakers for white characters has been done to death. Fugard's treatment and the setting of the play do breath freshness into the situation, and Sam is drawn as too graceful a character to be compared to an Uncle Remus. But reading of two grown African men spending their lives nursemaiding the offspring of their employer/oppressor, as if they were on a Georgia plantation, and going out of their way to "save this child" from his family's dysfunction and his country's inherent racism becomes wearisome. For those that enjoy movies like Mississippi Burning, The Ghosts of Mississippi, or A Time To Kill, stories in which tales of racial conflict are told with white main characters and Black supporting characters serving as props, this play will likely prove appealling. For stories that focus on the perspective of the African and not the colonizer, I would suggest Ousmane Sembene's God's Bits of Wood, Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God, Ayi Kwei Armah's Two Thousand Seasons, Cheik Hamadou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure, or Haile Gerima's film Sankofa.
Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly beautiful
Review: Beautifully executed one-act on the consequences of racism -- not just for the victims of racism, but for everyone. A must-read.
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Summary: Fugard does it again!
Review: I truly enjoyed Master Harold...and the Boys. Fugard creates a memorable character in Hally, a white South African boy. Hally discovers that the color of one's skin is not as important as he previously thought. Even though this is a theme prominent in Fugard's other plays, Fugard still triumphs. It falls short of My Children! My Africa!, yet remains a masterpiece in its own rite. It's difficult to explain why, but something about Hally and how he deals with others helped me to feel more "human." Definitely give it a read!
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Summary: Life: "None of us knows the steps, and no music's playing"
Review: Set in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1950, this powerful three-character play considers the interwoven relationships of young Harold (Hally), the seventeen-year-old son of the white proprietor of a tea room, and two of the African men who have worked there for years. Hally, unable to depend on his alcoholic father, now living in an institution, has always depended on Sam, the waiter, for guidance and knowledge about the real world. They share a long history in which Sam has been very much a father substitute for Hally, who has always shown him respect.
Willie, the custodian, who also looks to Sam for guidance, plans to participate, along with Sam, in a ballroom dancing competition in two weeks. For them, dancing "is beautiful because that is what we want life [in South Africa] to be like." In real life, however, "none of us knows the steps...we're bumping into each other all the time." As the play progresses, the three men reminisce, talk about their ideas of what constitutes a great hero, and show their easy relationship with each other.
A phone call announcing that Hally's father is being released from the hospital upsets the equilibrium, however. Hally, morose and worried about the future, fears that his father will once again destroy his world. Taking out his anger on Sam and Willie, he tears at their dreams regarding the dancing contest, mocking their goals and becoming cynical about what the contest means to them. As his frustration grows, Hally hurts them as he has been hurt by his father, demanding ultimately that both men call him "Master Harold."
Based on an incident in the life of the playwright, who was strongly opposed to the policies of apartheid which began in South Africa around 1948, this powerful and poignant drama casts Sam, a black man, as a person of vision and nobility. Hally, a young white man, chooses to exert power, instead of being human, and shows that he is a lesser man than either Sam or Willie. Less a political drama than a human one, the play rises above its immediate setting to consider universal feelings and human relationships. Mary Whipple
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Summary: Emotional, Insightful and Emphatic!
Review: The book is simply excellent. The way author has described the events of a whole day and the way he has highlighted the life of Harry and the South African Culture is heart touching. To do all this in one-sixty pages looks impossible, but Fugard has done this! Racial discrimination is not something new, its very easy to be a racist but it is very painful to be a victim of racism. The book shows the life of a Black servent who spent his entire life taking care of a white boy who was always neglected by his parents and especially by his father. The story moves fast and many characters come and go but basically only three characters dominate the entire play. The black servent in the end recieves recist attitude from that boy and the play takes an emotional turn. The love of the servent was answered by hatred and that led to pain and agony. From the ball room dancing to the school subjects, from the discussions concerning greatest reformers to the kite flying, from love to hatred, from joy to pain... this book has everything that could possibly happen in a day. Stunning and heart touching it makes us realize that one must never be a racist... and before doing any type of discrimination think about the same thing being done to you... and the book surely shows that "A man is like a mirror, you get back what you show it" Thus to get love, learn to love others and treat everyone equal! The book is a must to read, short and insightful!
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Summary: This book represents the racial tensions, that we expirence
Review: This book was originaly played with actor Danny Glover in it it. Like that is like realy cool. Like is it not
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Summary: This play showed cultural barriers broken
Review: This play shows how cultural differences do not exist when you care for a person. Sam was as close as Hally was going to get to a "father".
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Summary: A Common One-Act Play
Review: This play, although good, did not seem to be that exhilarating as other summer reading books for an AP English class. Most of the drama was rather melodramatic and did not seem very good. Perhaps it is better when performed.
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