Sam (Leon Addison Brown) and Willie (Sahr Ngaujah) prepare for a ballroom dance contest in Athol Fugard’s “MASTER HAROLD” AND THE BOYS at the Signature (photo © Monique Carboni 2016)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through December 4, $30-$50
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
South African playwright Athol Fugard revisits a painful part of his past in the Signature Theatre revival of his 1982 success, “Master Harold” . . . and the boys. Inspired by an actual event that continues to cause him shame, the play is set in St. George’s Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1950, just two years after Apartheid began. It’s a rainy afternoon, and the dapper Sam (Leon Addison Brown) is keeping watch on the empty restaurant while Willie (Sahr Ngaujah) cleans up. They discuss an upcoming ballroom dance competition, as the smooth-moving Sam offers advice to the stiff, distracted Willie. Sam tells him, “The secret is to make it look easy. Ballroom must look happy, Willie, not like hard work. It must . . . Ja! . . . it must look like romance.” Willie responds, “Now another one! What’s romance?” to which Sam answers, “Love story with happy ending. A handsome man in tails, and in his arms, smiling at him, a beautiful lady in evening dress!” They are soon joined by Hally (Noah Robbins), the seventeen-year-old son of the white family they work for as servants. While Willie calls the boy “Master Harold,” Sam refers to him as the more familiar Hally; the two are very close, and Sam is a kind of surrogate father to Hally, since the white boy’s real father is an alcoholic who has been hospitalized. Hally relates how he was beaten by his teacher at school that day, and Sam compares it to getting “strokes with a light cane” in prison. Hally dreams that things will get better. “I oscillate between hope and despair for this world as well, Sam. But things will change, you wait and see,” he says. “One day somebody is going to get up and give history a kick up the backside and get it going again.” Sam asks, “Like who?” Hally replies, “They’re called social reformers. Every age, Sam, has got its social reformer. My history book is full of them.” And Sam answers, “So where’s ours?” Meanwhile, Hally teaches Sam about history and language, discussing Winston Churchill, Napoleon, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and William Shakespeare. “Vestiges, feudal system, and abolished. I’m all right on oppression,” Sam says, pointing out some words he doesn’t quite understand, in addition to one he does, all too well. But after Hally gets a call from his mother with news about his father, the relationship between Sam and Hally takes a nasty turn.
Hally (Noah Robbins) makes a bad situation worse in gripping Athol Fugard revival (photo © Monique Carboni 2016)
“Master Harold” . . . and the boys premiered at Yale in 1982 — it was initially banned in South Africa — with Željko Ivanek as Hally, Zakes Mokae as Sam, and Danny Glover as Willie; it then moved to Broadway with Mokae, Glover, and Lonny Price taking over as Hally, earning a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding New Play. In the 2003 Broadway revival, Christopher Denham was Hally, Michael Boatman was Willie, and Glover played Sam. The new Signature version, directed by the eighty-four-year-old Fugard, is superb in all respects. Christopher H. Barreca’s tea-room set has a lurking coldness, the rain outside threatening a coming storm inside as well. Brown (The Trip to Bountiful, Two Trains Running), who has appeared in two previous Fugard productions at the Signature, is outstanding as the refined and poised Sam, who only wants everyone to be happy and to better his own situation in life, while Ngaujah (Fela!) is effective as his comic foil, a black man who seems content to stay where he is, not rocking any boats. Robbins (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Punk Rock) simmers to a slow boil as Hally, Fugard’s alter-ego — the writer’s real name is Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, there really was a Sam and Willie, and his mother did run the St. George’s Park Tea Room — leading to an explosive, powerful conclusion. “Master Harold” . . . and the boys is part of the Signature’s Legacy Program; four years ago, Fugard was the inaugural Residency One playwright at their new home, reviving Blood Knot and My Children! My Africa! in addition to premiering The Train Driver and The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek. Fugard and the Signature have brought back “Master Harold” . . . and the boys at an opportune moment, with America in the midst of a presidential election rife with heated arguments over class, race, gender, education, immigration, and the unequal distribution of wealth. Fugard writes and directs with such skill, and with such subtlety, that the play works in many contexts, relating to discrimination of all kinds everywhere, even when it’s a deeply personal tale story that still haunts him today. (There will be a discussion with dialect coach Barbara Rubin prior to the November 9 show, post-show talkbacks with members of the cast and creative team will follow the November 10, 15, and 22 performances, and the Signature Book Club will delve into Fugard’s Cousins: A Memoir on December 1 at 7:30.)
“It’s not gonna be easy but it’s gonna be awesome,” Steve Gleason promises his unborn child in the extraordinary documentary Gleason, a heartbreaking yet uplifting tale about dedication, family, and never giving up. On September 26, 2006, scrappy New Orleans safety and special teams stalwart Gleason became an all-time inspirational Saints hero when, on Monday Night Football, he blocked Atlanta Falcon Michael Koenen’s punt less than a minute and a half into the Saints’ first home game in the Superdome following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina the previous summer. 
Near the end of Weiner, one of the most revealing and entertaining documentaries about a political figure you’re ever likely to see, one of the directors, Josh Kriegman, asks subject extraordinaire Anthony Weiner, “Why have you let me film this?” It’s a great question, and one that can be inquired of Weiner’s wife as well, Huma Abedin, who stands alongside her scandal-ridden husband nearly every step of the way. (Of course, the film was made prior to the most recent scandal, which led to the dissolution of their marriage.) In May 2011, during his seventh term as a fierce, fiery congressman representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens, Weiner was forced to resign in disgrace after it was discovered that he had sent lewd pictures of himself to several women over a public social media account while lying about it as well. Just two years later, the Brooklyn-born Weiner decided to get back in the game, running for mayor of New York City. Kriegman, who was a senior aide to Weiner in 2004-5 and his New York chief of staff in 2005-6, thought the comeback campaign would make a fascinating story, and Weiner agreed, giving him virtually unlimited access to his family and staffers. Initially, everything is going better than expected: Weiner is leading in the polls and getting his message across. But then the sexting scandal rises up again, and it all starts falling apart. Weiner tries hard to fight the good fight, concentrating on communicating his political platform, but the media only wants to ask him and his brave wife about the sexting, even when it is clear that the people of New York City prefer to talk about the issues. “I guess the punch line is true about me. I did the things . . . but I did a lot of other things too,” Weiner acknowledges. Of course, maybe Weiner never really had a fair chance. The movie begins with a telling quote from Marshall McLuhan: “The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.” 
“I feel my day is coming, it’s my time,” soul singer extraordinaire Sharon Jones is shown saying at the beginning of Barbara Kopple’s touching and intimate documentary, Miss Sharon Jones! But that was before the former wedding singer and Rikers Island corrections officer, who was born in 1958 in North Augusta, South Carolina, raised in Brooklyn, and later lived in Queens, was diagnosed in June 2013 with stage two pancreatic cancer. Jones, who has been called the female James Brown — she tells a story in the film about the time she met the Godfather of Soul — allows the Oscar-winning Kopple (Shut Up & Sing, Harlan County, USA) remarkable access as she cuts off her trademark locks and chooses a wig, undergoes painful chemotherapy, is cared for by her close friend and holistic nutritionist Megan Holken, and visits her old stomping grounds in Augusta, Georgia. Jones shares her thoughts about her future, feeling responsible for the financial well-being of her longtime band, the Dap-Kings. “First and foremost, we’re a family,” Daptone Records cofounder and saxophonist Neal Sugarman says. In fact, “family” is a word that pops up often in the film when people describe their relationship with Jones, who has never married and has no children. Among those who talk about Jones, her amazing talent, and her fight with cancer are her oncologist, Dr. James Leonardo; her manager, Alex Kadvan, who is with her every step of the way; her assistant manager Austen Holman, who tries not to break down on camera; Daptone Records cofounder and bassist Gabe Roth; guitarist Binky Griptite, who is up front about his financial troubles while the band is on hiatus; drummer Homer Steinweiss; and Dapettes Starr Duncan Lowe and Saundra Williams.
“There’s not a part of this farm that has not been scattered with my sweat, my piss, my blood, my spit, my tears, fingernails, skin, and hair,” Peter Dunning says in Tony Stone’s Peter and the Farm. Dunning and Stone essentially show all that and more in the intimate documentary, holding nothing back, resulting in a film that is often difficult to watch, following a crotchety, suicidal, alcoholic sixty-nine-year-old organic meat farmer with a mangled hand who is estranged from his family and runs his 187-acre Vermont farm seemingly by himself. “I’m living in hell,” he says with cold detachment. Dunning is brutal with his animals, which include cows, sheep, and pigs, or at least it seems brutal to this city boy; Stone shows him shooting, skinning, and beheading one sheep, which caused me to look away from the screen, something I very rarely do. Stone also zooms in on a cow’s butt as it relieves itself of a massive amount of feces, followed by a vet sticking nearly his entire arm inside the animal to check if it is pregnant.
