Fugard, Athol

Oxford. 1977. Oxford University Press. 1st British Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0192812106. 164 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph: Paul Scofield as Dimetos at the Comedy Theatre, London, May 1976, by John Haynes. keywords: Drama Literature South Africa . FROM THE PUBLISHER - 'Dimetos had a guilty love for his niece, who hanged herself. One day the waves carried on to the fine sand of the beach the body of a marvellously beautiful young women. Seeing her, Dimetos fell on his knees, stricken with love. But he was forced to watch the decay of this magnificent body, and went mad. This was the niece's vengeance, and the symbol of a condition we must try to define.' In this paragraph from the Notebooks of Albert Camus, randomly encountered several years ago by Athol Fugard, lies the imaginative kernal of his latest play Dimetos. Commissioned for the 1975 Edinburgh Festival, it was reworked and revived the following year at the Nottingham Playhouse and in the West End of London with Paul Scofield in the title role. Its setting is abstract (though one can find a South African application in its spare, even stark action); the language is insistently powerful; and the central conflict between guilty withdrawal and responsibility is explosively drawn. The two early plays, No-Good Friday and Nongogo, both for chiefly black casts, were performed in 1974 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. In No-Good Friday , the hero is compelled by circumstance to take action against the forces of corruption which threaten to engulf his personality and undermine his integrity. In Nongogo Queeny, shebeen-owner and former prostitute, meets honest, hard-working Johnny , and we witness the mutual impact of their opinions about themselves and each other. Although works of Fugard's apprenticeship, these plays exhibit his characteristic compassion, fierceness, dissatisfaction, and humour. inventory #12507 ISBN: 0192812106.