Innovative works of live performance for multicultural audiences.

Shaping Ideas into theatrical events.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Winona Daily News

By Don Staricka

I attended Theatre du Mississippi’s performance of Athol Fugard’s “My Children! My Africa!” Friday night and I was knocked out by the quality of both the play itself and the performance.  Maggy Jacquim has assembled a super hot team of actors and crafted a really tight, energetic production.  I have never seen a Broadway production but I have seen successful off-Broadway plays as well as comparable theater productions in Los Angeles.  This is right up there with the best of them.

I was a bit stunned by the quality, in fact.  Two of the actors are bachelor’s graduates from the University of Minnesota Guthrie program and Carlyle Brown  (a successful playwright himself) has his own theater company in Minneapolis.  Those who come in expecting some sort of mediocre community theater effort may find themselves a bit overwhelmed.

They will be surprised also by the relevance of the play.  It is easy to assume that a play about the struggle to overturn apartheid in South Africa would have little bearing upon the world we live in today.  The play addresses larger issues, however; and it is far from being merely a doctrinaire denunciation of one distant country’s long-dead racial policies.  Just as Richard III was about more than the ascent to the throne by a scheming tyrant and Henry V was about more than a dustup between France and England hundreds of years ago, this play strays far from its putative topic to address such issues as truth, justice, honor, ambition, loyalty, friendship and courage.

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