Metro Stage: "The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek"

This is both my second play by the great South African playwright, Athol Fugard, and the second production that I have seen at Metro Stage.  Metro Stage is a small professional theatre located on the edge of Reagan National Airport at the very northern end of Arlington, Virginia.  On a good night like this one, it takes me about 45 minutes to get there.  Did I mention it's small?  I don't even know, I think it seats around 80 to 100 people. 

"The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek" occurs in two acts which jump by about 20 years between them.  The first act features the last work of art created by a Black man who has spent his entire life under the oppression and servitude that was Apartheid.  The action takes place just 3 days before his death.  Skip ahead to an encounter at that painting by the young boy who is now a man, and the Afrikaner Boer's wife who were both with the artist on that day.  Now all grown, Apartheid banish, Black on White violence reaching its post-Apartheid peak, these one time antagonists are now given the opportunity to find humanity in one another.  It's a power play.  Fugard's most recent and probably his last.

Doug Brown as Nukain and
Jeremiah Hasty as young Bokkie

The sets, sound/visual and lighting are simple and evocative of the rich, barren but beautiful South African Karoo with it's primordial kopje rock formation.  The acting was first rate and I found myself moved to tears on more than one occasion.  Some of the words were hard to hear, but important.  At one point an exchange made me think of our current political polarization and how those who support Trump as an act against Obama are not at all dissimilar to the Afrikaners who feared majority rule in the nation that their God had given them to conquer and transform.  The Boer's wife reflecting on the changes that were overwhelming her opines, "Everything I know is changing.  I feel lost.  If I do not belong here, where do I go?"

In a twist of circumstance that honestly surprised me, after feeling like I would be lucky to get a ticket on such short notice, I arrived early out of a fear of not getting a parking space in the limited lot adjacent to the theatre, and; actors and audience combined came in at 15 souls.  I sat on the second row direct center and felt like I was the only one who was there!  And the actors didn't drop a stitch.  They played there parts with the intensity of people performing to a packed house 10x's as large.  I'm certain that this amplified my own appreciation and enjoyment.  It's on until the 30th of September.  I can't recommend it enough.

Jeremy Keith Hunter as the adult Bokkie and
Marni Penning as Elmarie Kleynhans