Hello and Goodbye

Synopsis

Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Johnny is alone in the family home when a stranger arrives: Don't you recognise me at all?...I'm Hester. Your sister. Why has Hester returned? What is Johnny so afraid of? And what lies in the darkened bedroom next door? That night, hopes and secrets of the past and present are revealed in a tense battle of wills. Intimate, raw and powerful. Hello and Goodbye is an early work by Athol Fugard, the internationally acclaimed chronicler of South African life..

Our Review:

25 April 2008

One of his earliest plays, Hello and Goodbye (1965) relates as much to Athol Fugard’s early life and experience as it does to the brutal political realities of poverty and apartheid in South Africa. And yet, as Paul Robinson’s powerful production in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios reveals, this is essentially a play about a poor, derelict white brother and his older sister, Johnny and Hester Smit, unscrambling their relationship with a dying, unseen father.

Fugard has said that he started work on the play when Nelson Mandela was jailed in 1963. Mandela was still in prison when it was first performed in this country by Ben Kingsley and Janet Suzman in 1973 at the King’s Head and again by Antony Sher and Estelle Kohler for the RSC in 1988, ten years after the abolition of apartheid in 1978.

Its dramatic urgency remains unimpaired in this intensely acted revival with rising star Rafe Spall and the much more ex...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

David Baxter - 15 May 2008:

At the risk of causing offence, the prospect of two hours listening to the South African accent was not very appealing. So it came as a relief that Athol Fugard's play was so raw and engrossing. Libby Watson's design made the best use I have seen so far of Studio 2 recreating a shabby Port Elizabeth hovel where siblings Hester and Johnny argue over their father's compensation and painful memories. Rafe Spall and Saskia Reeves produce two exceptional performances, despite occasional wobbles with the accents and too much intensity for such a small space. Unfortunately any possible surprise from the twist in the second half was nullified having been mentioned in almost every review, but nonetheless this is an electrifying examination of the ruined lives of two members of the white underclass in South Africa's evil era of apartheid....

Read more and add your own review