THE apartheid grip could not stifle Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, a play that escaped South Africa to win two Tony Awards in New York in 1974.

Nevertheless, white playwright Athol Fugard and his Johannesburg cast of John Kani and Winston Ntshona, his black co-writers of this 1972 devised piece, were charged with treason by the South African government.

From the distance of 2009, 19 years since the release of Nelson Mandela, Fugard’s play may no longer carry the weight of political urgency or resilience, or even a sense of underground danger, but its greater message still holds true.

Hence Scarborough artistic director Chris Monks has not been alone in reviving a South African play with an impact rivalled perhaps only by The Island and Woza Albert!. Signs saying No Admittance Without Passbook and notices on seats that state Net Blankes (Only Whites) set the scene: such theatrical gestures feel somewhat token, as does the printing of the programme in the form of a passbook, but they nevertheless serve as reminders of segregated times.

As with Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon’s more overtly anti-apartheid work Woza Albert!, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead is a two-hander imbued with absurdist humour, but fear too.

The play opens with erstwhile Brookside star Louis Emerick in the first of two roles: Styles, the bow-tied proprietor of a township photographic studio in Port Elizabeth, where initially he recalls his days working in sweatshop conditions on the Ford assembly line.

The old desire for independence, freedom and dignity still burns beneath the surface humour that is played by Emerick with a storytelling comic’s timing and manic movement.

Laughter darkens when a nervous, illiterate young man arrives (Seun Shote), calling himself Robert Zwelinzima but in reality Sizwe Banzi, in need of a photo to cover his tracks after assuming the identity card of a corpse.

When Emerick reappears as the streetwise facilitator Buntu, the back story emerges, one of false identity that explains the play’s title and reaffirms the human need to be able to move, counter discrimination and lead a life of choice.

In the passage of time since 1972, ire has made way, at least in part, for irony, especially when Styles comments on the possibility of South Africa hosting an international football tournament being no more likely than a black president of the United States.

Emerick and Shote give tremendous performances in a production that adds another string to Monks’s impressively expanding bow at Scarborough.


Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until September 26. Box office: 01723 370541.