The good ship SS Graigaur slipped its moorings and set sail from the State Theatre last week, carrying on board a youthful, starry-eyed writer called Athol fugard, en route to a date with artistic destiny. Also on board, Jennifer Steyn, as his young mother-cum-muse, and Owen Sejake as the burly Kenyan donkeyman.
The autobiographical voyage of self- discovery seeks to give the audience an insight into the creative wrestlings of a young man standing at the edge of his artistry, grappling not only with literary verisimilitude, but with truth and honesty in terms of himself and his relationship to his parents.
Setting out to write Bettie le Roux: Story of a South African Woman, the writer is in constant interaction with his imagination, represented by Bettie herself, a character based on Fugard’s mother. The character challenges the author to the point of real self-examination, where life and art converge, and where some form of discovery is bound to occur.
Engine-room mechanic and confidant donkeyman dispatches some greasy, rooted advice along the way, and becomes a friend and driving force for the young Fugard to draw upon.
Although completely illiterate, the likeable donkeyman seems to understand the importance of the fiery writer’s passion, and urges him onward. Is the universal creativity transcending education or culture? Or is this simply a simple tale?
That there is doubt indicates that this play is far less didactic than many of Fugard’s previous works, some of which, in performance and text, placed the intellectual before the theatrical. Despite this text’s intensely personal nature, where the other characters are foils for Fugard’s journey, it rarely allows for audience identification or empathy, promoting a sense of indifferent detachment.
In a biography of Fugard by Russel Vandenbroucke, the author writes: “Many writers begin their careers autobiographically and become more `objective’ through time. For Fugard, the process has been the reverse.”
Vandenbroucke declares Master Harold and the Boys his finest example of autobiographical success because “the action has a more cohesive form and clearer meaning than the actual events of Fugard’s life, because they have been ordered to a work of art rather than a precise historical recapitulation”.
In The Captain’s Tiger, one gets the impression that the reverse is true, and that the actual events were more cohesive and carried more meaning than the theatrical version.
The Captain’s Tiger is largely a narrated, retrospective monologue, where the intermittent interactions with the other players do little to alleviate what is essentially untheatrical theatre. This stasis and dearth of visual stimulation make the production no more entertaining than a radio play, and while Jennifer Steyn and Owen Sejake give excellent, flesh-and- blood performances, the cadence and rhythm of the narrative invoked monotony rather than involvement.
In Vandenbroucke’s biography, negative criticism following the London premiere of Dimetos is cited as the reason for Fugard vowing never to direct again.
He went on to direct his very next play, and later, in 1980, Fugard said: “I’m living quietly with the sense of having one more appointment with that play as director.” Vandenbroucke writes, “If Fugard does direct the play again, he may need to find clearer dramatic images and action … “, a sentiment appropriate to The Captain’s Tiger.
However, the production is not without some powerful, poignant moments, which highlight the potential of the play and its dramatic possibilities. Fugard’s mental confrontations with the reality of his relationship with his father and mother are particularly moving and offer rare moments of real empathy for the audience.
Similarly, the “boys own” bonding between cabin boy and ship’s mechanic is humorous and charming, recalling Fugard’s traditional mastery of human communication. His use of language throughout the play alternates between serious and tongue-in- cheek, with moments of warmth as he recalls his early attempts at “serious prose”.
Perhaps the production would have been more effective and certainly more varied if the young Fugard was played by a young actor, thereby at least releasing the older, “narrative” Fugard from performing his own recollections.
Ultimately though, it’s a ponderous, sparsely-staged documentary journey with little dramatic variety, militating against the text’s desire to confide in the audience its very personal messages. Although Fugard’s return to his beginning is interesting, in this form it is perhaps too private and personal to enlighten or entertain beyond itself-as-event.