BWW Reviews: THE PAINTED ROCKS AT REVOLVER CREEK Honors Outsider Artist Mabusa

"I have got no more flowers in me," says the artist who is at the center of playwright/director Athol Fugard's touching and lyrical new drama, The Painted Rocks At Revolver Creek.

Though the play is a work of fiction, the 82-year-old South African scribe's inspiration was Nukain Mabusa, who began painting a rock garden in the Mpumalanga Province of his country during the mid-1960s. Fugard uses the outsider artist's lifelong creation as a symbol of a person's need to leave something behind as a remembrance of who he or she is, especially if that person left this world knowing his burial site would identify him with just an official number.

Beginning 1981, during apartheid, Leon Addison Brown plays a character referred to only as Nukain, an elderly artist with philosophical charm and a strong connection to his heritage. As a laborer living on the land of his Afrikaner employer, he began his painting project with the encouragement of the lady of the house, Elmarie (Bianca Amato), who enjoys his colorful, flower-like images. (Set designer Christopher H. Barreca does a great job recreating Mabusa's work.)

Though initially intimidated by the giant boulder planted center stage, Nukain, with the help of his young buddy nicknamed Bokkie (an excellent Caleb McLaughlin), is inspired to cover it with a symbol-laden expression of his life story.

Elmarie doesn't quite get the completed work and tells Nukain to wash it off and paint more pretty flowers on the boulder. The artist agrees with humble subservience but Bokkie, who sees the man as a teacher and father figure, loudly objects. Elmarie insists that Nukain should teach the boy respect by whipping him with his belt.

Act two takes place in 2003, with South Africa's new constitution legally eliminating the institutionalized racism of apartheid. A grown-up Bokkie, a school principal whose real name is Jonathan (Sahr Ngaujah), sneaks into the rock garden in the middle of the night intending to restore the now-deceased Nukian's work. He's met by Elmarie, pointing a revolver at him.

With the change of government, Afrikaner landowners have been subjected to violent attacks and, not recognizing Jonathan, the now-widowed Elmarie is taking no chances in protecting her life and her property.

When he finally tells her who he is, their reunion is civil, though far from joyful, as they discuss the extreme shift in the country's racial relations and each group's claim to its land.

The ensemble cast is very strong and the volatile issues are explored with soft-spoken eloquence. A very moving piece presented in an engaging production.

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