Hard time

The Island is a potent blend of form and content

by Bill Rodriguez

THE ISLAND. By John Kani, Winston Ntshona and Athol Fugard. Directed by Donald W. King. With Raidge and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley. At Providence Black Repertory Company through February 15

In a season with a run on prisoner plays, it's refreshing to have one as site-specific as The Island. Generic injustice and nobility of endurance is all well and good, but the apartheid-inflicted travail in South Africa has its own particular impact.

It's usually performed with Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, the other short play that Athol Fugard wrote in 1972 with John Kani and Winston Ntshona The Island draws from their ordeal as prisoners. In the second full production by the new Providence Black Repertory Company, artistic director Donald W. King is doing well by the 90-minute play.

The place is Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years. In developing the play, the two former prisoners improvised exchanges and supplied the rage, while Afrikaner playwright Fugard provided the structure, located the theatrical opportunities. The result was a potent blend of form and content. Instead of presenting us a political tract that we already agree with, the play lunges at us, gets us to react to actions rather than bromides.

The opening moment is explosive, but in an ironically festive way. John (Ricardo Pitts-Wiley) bursts forth greeting us as the Greek King Creon. Giddily he addresses us as "fat and happy" people, but his little speech ends on a menacing note as he declares that "the shield has defended, now the sword must strike." Our disorientation dissolves somewhat as we find that John and his cellmate Winston (hip-hop poet Raidge) are about to perform a two-man version of Sophocles' Antigone. The choice is apt. It was Antigone's fate to be condemned to death by Creon for doing the honorable thing -- burying her brother Polynices after being forbidden to do so by the king of Thebes.

The parallel isn't belabored. Instead, we are at first entertained by the two men squabbling over doing the performance at all. John can't resist laughing himself double over the prospect of Winston dressing as Antigone, mop strands draping his head as a wig. Furious, Winston refuses to continue. In an effective juxtaposition, the levity comes right after we glimpse the daily work life that laughter rescues them from. Wordlessly, with labored breath, the actors mime filling wheelbarrows and hurrying over to dump them and start again. For reasons we never learn, a sadistic unseen guard named Hidoshi is trying to push them past endurance.

The set is a simple one in the small black-box theater on Washington Street. A narrow swath of sand surrounds the "island" of their cell, which isn't big enough for much more than two bedrolls and a bucket of water. But it is the psychological claustrophobia that makes the stronger impression on us. The conventions of prison plays, as with recent ones at Alias Stage and Perishable Theatre, require homage to the power of imagination for such shut-ins. It works well here, although it shouldn't. John pretends to be on the phone to mates back in the township and passes a message on to his wife. Somehow, when Winston clamors to listen in and speak himself not in jest but for real, it's testimony to the entrancement of theater that we accept his desperation, empathize with it, instead of balking at the theatrical exaggeration.

Raidge is a strong physical presence here, which fits well with his portrayal of Winston as an unbudgeable mountain of willfulness. By the end, Raidge has created a character who towers as large in our minds as he does in our sight. Veteran Pitts-Wiley has a firm grip on John as some sort of Holy Fool. He doesn't just let him burst forth in enthusiastic abandon, he gives John a depth that anchors all the flighty jocularity.

Rooted as it is in the essence of hardship, if not literal description, The Island is a powerful work. The Providence Black Repertory Company certainly does it justice.