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The very creation of The Island was a crime, a slap in the face for South African apartheid. Devised by white author Athol Fugard and black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, the 1973 play is set in the brutal jail on Robben Island, home of then-political prisoner Nelson Mandela and others. It comes to Toronto with the original cast — Kani and Ntshona — in a 1999 revival that’s been acclaimed in Europe. Playing a pair of inmates who survive on memories, fantasies and the chance to perform a telling piece of Greek drama, the actors give personal weight to a story that illuminates the power of theatre — think of Our Country’s Good or The Drawer Boy. Like all the stage works in which Fugard has a hand, the specific narrative situation opens up into a potent statement on human nature and values, one that vibrates in the mind and heart long after the curtain has fallen. See details, this page.
