"Master Harold"... and the Boys at Kansas City Actors Theatre

Athol Fugard's semi-autobiographical, Drama Desk Award-winning Master Harold and the Boys is often regarded as one of the esteemed South African playwrights best works. In a tea room of 1950 apartheid-era Port Elizabeth, South Africa, a rainy day is spent between two black waiters, Sam (Walter Coppage) and Willie (Khalif Gillett), and the white, teenaged Hally (Arthur Clifford), whose parents own the restaurant. Sam and Willie have been father figures to Hally throughout his life in place of the strained relationship with his own father, but what begins as a relaxing and playful afternoon slowly turns into something much darker as years of building trust, friendship, and respect are put on the line. Is Hally doomed to be the product of generational and institutionalized racism?