TWO South Africans, desperate to escape the impoverished futility of their lives, break into the home of an aging academic who walks in on them as they're ransacking the place for money. A pair of wealthy scions with off-the-charts IQs and a perverse attachment to each other leapfrog from petty burglary to arson to "the crime of the century." An egomaniacal writer with puppy dog good looks and an inveterate passive-aggressive streak travels around the country to check in on the girlfriends he dumped after promising them the moon. And a daughter living in small-town Ireland must decide whether to visit her long-lost mother who devastated her father by deserting him.
The situations these characters find themselves in are not your everyday binds. Playwrights prefer it a bit more extreme. And the cavalcade of quietly original plays that has greeted us this winter has shown that there's nothing as catchy as an old-fashioned narrative hook.
'Victory' photo: In the Sunday Arts & Music section, the credit was missing from a photograph with Charles McNulty's Critic's Notebook on the Fountain Theatre's production of "Victory." Ed Kreiger took the photo.
Photo credit: A credit was missing from a photograph last Sunday that accompanied a Critic's Notebook by Charles McNulty of the Fountain Theatre's production of "Victory." Ed Kreiger took the photo.
In truth, there has been nothing radical about this fresh infusion of talent into the larger institutional and smaller independent theaters. Revolutionary ideas aren't being promoted, artistic paradigms haven't shifted, and there's nary a masterpiece in the lot.
Yet the successive invitations to explore untrodden dramatic trails have made for marvelous adventure this season. Stylistic journeys are always invigorating. But it has been an even greater pleasure -- and a psychological relief -- to be enclosed in imaginative worlds that are so captivatingly furnished. Full-bodied storytelling, even when the tale is bleak, is an uplifting phenomenon.
Take the trio who make up Athol Fugard's "Victory," which is receiving its U.S. premiere at the Fountain Theatre under the assured direction of Stephen Sachs. The taut drama -- a small, straightforward post-Apartheid one-act -- centers on a bungled burglary. Freddie (Lovensky Jean-Baptiste), a black kid from the South African slums, and Vicky (Tinashe Kajese), his impressionable mixed-race accomplice, have broken into the home of a retired white teacher named Lionel (Morlan Higgins), who catches them looting his valuables.
