"...poetic symbolism...surreal intensity."

June 13, 2002 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Fugard’s Dimetos is a challenging, disturbing, and well-worth seeing play. It is a play of poetic symbolism and at times of a surreal intensity. The characters are dynamically drawn and acted with immediacy. They are explosive and tender, self-confident and guilt-ridden. Betrayal and grace are its strong themes.

The staging is brilliant, if occasionally confusing. The play opens on a scene of high emotional tension. In the darkness one hears the galloping of a frightened horse. Its approach shakes the very seats upon which we sit as it thunders upon us to crash into a deep well.

When the lights come on, we are in that well where a near-naked young girl, listening to advice from far above her, sits astride the horse and attaches the stout ropes that will pull both of them to safety. Shafts of light and the assuring voice of Dimetos from far above establish the depth from which they must be pulled.

On one level the scene is mythic, symbolic. On a more literal level, it immediately establishes the characters and the changes which this event will bring about. Dimetos, brilliantly played by Eric Hill, is full of authority and self-confidence. His engineering skills, which he has laid aside when he left the city six years before to seek a simpler life in a lonely Greek village with his young niece Lydia (Tara Franklin) and housekeeper (Anne O'Sulllivan), these skills he knows can bring the horse and girl up.

But the very event will bring on the tragedy. The young half-naked girl is suddenly happy and confident in her achievement; the man sees her in a new and regrettably tragic way. The situation is complicated by the arrival from the city of a young man, Danilo, (Jeremy Davidson) who wants to lure Dimetos back to the city, and by the feelings of the housekeeper, too long suppressed.

The first act, by far the strongest of the two act play, ends in violence and tragedy. It is a brilliant act in terms of staging, lighting, direction and acting.

Hill is an amazing actor. His vocal and emotional ranges are wide and always in what seems an easy control. His strong masculine movements are as precise as those of a dancer and his use of his hands, especially on the ropes, and in act two on the stones, is a joy to behold. Franklin is sheer delight. Her character warms us to her joys in her new-found confidence and then shatters us in her betrayal.

Act II in this still-experimental play is less easy to follow. (It was first produced at the Fringe in Scotland in 1975.) The big broad outlines are there, but one has a feeling Fugard has omitted obligatory lines or scenes to make his mythic message clear. In the second act, Hill’s acting dominates with his skillful portrayal of a guilt verging on madness and with his handling of the stones ground smooth by the sea, but there is a sense that one is missing something .

Although director Peter Wallace has envisioned Fugard’s material in an invigorating and moving manner, and the actors are a tight ensemble, the script seems flawed and imperfect. However, the production is a challenging and, at times, brilliant one and well worth seeing.