Athol Fugard sets us off in The Train Driver with a sullen song. What are we about to see? Well, we meet one of the characters, who briefly introduces us to the background information. Although there are two sides to the story, Fugard chooses to write the play is told through the perspective of the train driver.

Based on a true story, Roelf, a train driver, is a middle-aged white man. His life falls apart when he is consumed by his own guilt. A mother and her three children had jumped in front of his incoming train to kill themselves. Of course, Roelf does not have the option to successfully stop the train before he comes in contact with the mother and children. After the accident, he is infuriated. Roelf was in search of the woman’s grave when he encounters Simon, a black man who makes a living by burying unnamed bodies. He places rubbish on the heap of sand to mark the grave that is already taken.

The stage was dimly lit, scattered with heaps of sand. Stones, tin cans, bottles, and other garbage topped the sand, giving the audience an impression of a graveyard with no graves. A shack was mounted in the center of the stage with an old and broken down car on the right. The appearance of the stage set the mood for the play; there was a tone of seriousness and desperation. This very suitably represented the influence of the apartheid. The sound effects and temperature of the theater were very noteworthy. When it became night, the lights dimmed, and the crisp wind can be heard whistling in the air. Not only that, but the air felt significantly cooler, as if you were there in the scene with the characters.

The overall setting and physicalities of the play was very simple. This let the audience focus more on what the characters are saying, giving them the opportunity to really understand how each one is feeling, specifically the train driver.

There were no unwelcome pauses between Ritchie Coster (as Roelf) and Leon Addison Brown (as Simon). Both actors knew their lines by heart and did not hesitate even once in the 90-minute play. There was passion in their acting, which helped place the audience in the shoes of the characters. Roelf started off so hysterical and infuriated that his voice shook. Although he spoke with a thick accent, his actions, the profanity, and tone of his voice was more than necessary to understand how he was feeling. “I’m fucked up in here,” he says, pointing to his head. He paced around the stage and was very distraught, as if his thoughts were scattered all over the stage. Simon, the soft-spoken character of the two, very clearly presented his very gentle and caring nature. However, his lines were very brief and sometimes so abrupt that they were surprising, but nonetheless entertaining like, “I sleep now.” Very little is revealed about Simon, compared to Roelf because of this.

The play was full of dialogue, and quite frankly, a little too much dialogue. There was not much action which led to some of the audience slipping their attention away. Now, even though there was so much dialogue, the audience is still left hanging with a few questions. What did the train driver expect when he arrived at the graveyard? What would he have done if he could locate the woman’s body? Why did the woman jump in front of the train? What was she thinking at the time? Even with the information already given to the audience, there is room for them to interpret what has not been answered.

The play The Train Driver was meant to portray the influence of the apartheid and it very well did; the audience left the theater feeling shaken and despair. It showed the interracial relationship as well as how both sides felt about the accident. In the end, however, no matter what race, we’re really all the same.

Credit: Signature Theatre

From the entry of Simon with his beautiful song to the unnecessary profanities of the train driver (Roelf Visagie, played by Ritchie Coster), The Train Driver appeals to many emotions that convey to the viewer the dynamics of a rather depressing situation. Simon (played by Leon Addison Brown), unable to get a decent job due to the color of his skin, digs graves for black people near the railroad; the ones who are named in one pile and the unknown ones in another. Conversational exchanges between Coster and Brown show the delicate balance of racial relationships in South African society. The way the train driver treats Simon in the beginning, with the pushy dialogue and the subtle race related remarks, is also proof of this. Both actors demonstrated to an excellent extent the authenticity of apartheid and how it affected interracial interactions. Fugard’s experience with plays relating to racial tensions can be perceived effectively through the way Simon is protecting the train driver from the groups of black people that raid some nights, hiding him in his shed, even giving him his food. Even after they become friends, there is still a hesitance between them that is due to the difference in their complexions. The two characters each have their own little quirks, providing uniqueness to otherwise basic Caucasian and black males. For example, Simon’s laugh is enough to cause an audience to smirk a little itself, while the off color swearing by the train driver depicts his anger and confused state of mind. These characters fit the general role of black and white males in apartheid filled South Africa, but these interesting characteristics are what set them apart from the expected caricatures. From the authentic accents and the genuine conditions of a poverty stricken black South African man to the train driver’s rain jacket and Simon’s large, uncomfortable overcoat, one can clearly see that South Africa’s apartheid culture was well represented in this performance.

Technically very sound, the performance’s sound effects of trains, people, and even dogs were used to great results in order to create a sense of fear and anticipation when the two main characters could not provide the spark. Even the lighting of the fire in Simon’s shed had an ominous feel to it, sending a dreary shudder through the audience. Dimly lit with a dark backdrop, there was actual gravel on the stage floor. The morose atmosphere of the stage was extremely somber, well suited to the play’s needs. With every description of the scene in which the lady and her baby were killed, an image forms of a struggle of a man trying to stop a train and then a sudden thud. The train driver’s agony is reflected through these memories and flashbacks. Many questions arise in the audience’s mind.  Who was this lady? What was going through her mind? Was it an accident? Suicide? Why the baby as well? The ending of the play is the complex unraveling of the racial tension between Simon and the train driver along with the self- deprecating attitude of the train driver reaching a breaking point. The train driver’s search for personal peace is what guides him to do what he does, but attaining this peace proves to be rather difficult.

This play deals with an inner struggle of a man who has experienced a life-changing event. However, the underlying theme of the prominence of racial differences is felt in every swear, every song, and every gesture made by the two men. The one complaint about this play, if anything would be that Fugard may have not necessarily taken the knowledge level of all audiences into account. It can be clearly be seen that there are racial undertones to the plot, but it would have been better if there was some more direct racial conflict. The audience should definitely do their research before viewing any performance of The Train Driver.

Why would a man care so deeply for a woman he didn’t know? What causes benevolence even in times of prejudice and hatred between two completely opposite men? Hope, and therefore the lack of hope inspire and plague the characters of this play, as internal and external struggles shape their lives and decisions. One of the smoothest, most well rehearsed performances in recent memory, this is a must watch for any theater lover.

Credit: Navtej S. Ahuja (Photographer), James Houghton and Erika Mallin (Directors), and The Perishing Square Signature Center (SignatureTheater)

Fugard’s The Train Driver is a performance made unique and memorable by the way it was told. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that this is a two person play that creatively makes use of the power of memory through story telling. The plot is driven through listening to Roelf (Ritchie Coster) tell his story. But the play becomes mind-blowing when one realizes that this is actually a story within a story since the play is in actuality a memory being told to us by Simon (Leon Addison Brown). Even if the play tanks, Fugard deserves credit for the ingenius way the play is presented. The plays meta qualities show how memory is a central theme this play.

Credits to Richard Termine/Boneau/Bryan-Brown via Bloomberg

Ritchie Coster and Leon Addison Brown made no noticeable mistakes in their lines. Coster portrays his character well but he does not come without a few grievances. He is able to effectively deliver the raw rage and desparation that initially consumes his character Roelf. Although his accent is initially thick and rough, his tone of voice is more than enough to adequately show his frustration. Once I was adjusted to his thick accent, the myriad of profanity spewed constantly from his mouth. At first what seemed like disgruntlement quickly became repetitive almost to a point where it plain vulgar.

Leon Addison Brown’s role as Simon is largely overshadowed by Coster’s role as Roelf. His humbleness, soft-spoken lines make him easily forgettable. However, this is not to say that he is unnecessary. His gentleness and innocent nature makes him incredibly likeable and is essential in Roelf’s mental transformation. Simon’s laid back attitude at times also provided tidbits of humor and comic relief that was necessary after tense moments filled with intense emotion.

The two demonstrated good teamwork in this two-man ninety production. There was no clashing between the actors. However, that is not necessarily a good thing. Without any big clashes between the characters, at times it was almost as if Brown’s character was part of the audience watching Coster play Roelf.

The setting was almost a whole achievement in itself. The broken down car, junk, litter, and sand scattered all over the place created a wonderful set that was pleasing to the eye and set aside the tradition wooden stages. Perhaps one of the most amazing things about the set was that there was interaction with the junk scattered around. The setting also effectively paralleled the desparation in Roelf. Here we see a man who is angry and largely confused wandering desperately in search of answers. Yet he ends up in a desolate and depressing graveyard. Who can answer his questions when everyone is dead here?

Credit to Signature Theatre

The play went undisturbed and flowed nicely. This was largely due to both the lighting and sound effects. The lights subtly changes from dark to bright and then back to dark to mimic the sun passing throughout the day. It happens a few times throughout the play. The sound effects also secretly combine with the lighting by creating sounds of wind to show the cool air of the night. What was amazing was that during the transition to night, waves of cool air actually passed through the theatre to convey a realistic feeling.

As a play with a social theme, The Train Driver does indeed show the results and aspects of apartheid in South Africa. Its ending offers a wake-up call with shocking realism about the fragility of life and how in the end we’re all just skin and bones.

Vulgar and wretched, yet sympathetic, cries of a traumatized white train driver echoed the compact theater and startled me with his every exclamation as I was sitting merely a few feet from stage.  Roelf Visagie (Ritchie Coster), the train driver, enters the scene to accompany Simon Hanabe (Leon Addison Brown), the old gravedigger, at center stage by climbing down from realistic train tracks onto an actual bashed-up car located at the side of a sand and garbage covered stage.

Scattered everywhere were mounds of sand to represent graves of the “unnamed,” those who died and have not been claimed for. The setting was stagnant; the play took place at the graveyard all throughout because the element of time was nicely made clear the focus by the play of lighting to represent the passing of time.

Photograph by Nancy Zhu

Everything was truly realistic: the sand dust floating in the air with every forceful digging Roelf does, using actual fire to light the candle, and the power in both the characters’ emotions. With the audience situated so close to the stage, it is not difficult to understand that the play captured everyone’s attention and grasped onto our emotions.

Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver aimed to bring to light a different point of view during apartheid in South Africa. The play holds the view of the situation through the mind of the white train driver in the times where whites were superior to blacks. Here, Fugard portrays that though Roelf was a white male, accidentally killing a black woman and her child was not an easy thing for him to get over. In fact, he exclaims, “Does she know she ruined my life?” We learn through Roelf’s mix of angered and distressed emotions effectively portrayed by his drunk-like behavior of endless rants and incomprehensible murmuring that he blames the unnamed black woman, who jumped in front of his train, for his loss of everything and his hope to find an answer to essentially the question, “Why is life so?” We can see he shifts his perception from completely blaming her to, in the end, sympathizing for her and wishing that somebody had claimed her, as his steps and voice become noticeably calmer. It was touching to learn that despite the clash and constant tension between blacks and whites in the apartheid in South Africa, Roelf, a white man, through socializing with an old black haggard character, Simon, was able to come to a conclusion that although he lives in a completely different world and he has no way of finding out the way the unnamed black woman may have lived, or why she decided to jump in front of the train, he is certain that she is human too and deserves more respect in her grave. She deserved someone to claim her, thus he wished he had done so for respect.

Fugard’s play, The Train Driver, was performed so smoothly and realistically that this is worth the time for any one to give theater a shot.

The eerie graveyard setting of Athol Fugard’s play “The Train Driver” is an excellent fit for the story the play tells. The barren wasteland filled with garbage, a broken down car and a lone hut set the mood for the play, a serious and hopeless tone to match the topic of Apartheid. Like everything, Apartheid has two sides. Fugard chooses to write about the interesting white person point of view, telling the story through the eyes of a crazed train driver.

Based on a true story about how a mother jumped in front of a train killing herself and her three children, “The Train Driver” takes a solemn atmosphere from the very beginning. Roelf Visagie (Ritchie Coster) plays the maddened train driver, who has had his life destroyed by the accident. Though not at fault, he is still haunted by the image of the pulverized body of the nameless woman, “red doek” that his train hit, and he has come to the squatter camp to look for her grave.

He meets the gravedigger, Simon Hanabe (Leon Addison Brown), a black man who earns his meager living by burying the unnamed dead and marking their spots with garbage. The scattered bricks, irons, bottles and rocks lying still in the sand sadly do not act as headstones; they just mark the places where he is not to dig again, showing the little respect that the nameless dead receive. Over the next 90 minutes, the two men talk and although Hanabe never fully welcomes Roelf, he accepts him into his home after warning him that it is dangerous for him outside.

Credits to Richard Termine/Boneau/Bryan-Brown via Bloomberg

Roelf has reflective moments during the play. Unlike his rash, accented screaming and yelling at Hanabe at the beginning of the play, which is very hard to understand, these later monologues can be understood. He strikes a serious note with idea that death is the ultimate unifier. “Black man or white man…the maggots don’t care about that.” Roelf begins to understand the story from the black point of view, understanding the hopelessness and despair that the black underclass felt. His anger subsides and he no longer hates the nameless and unwanted woman.

Coster and Brown both do above average jobs of acting their role. Brown always looks and speaks with respect to Coster, who is playing the white man in the play. However with his short and abrupt dialogue, not much is revealed about him, which is disappointing since he is one of only two characters in the play. He is a simple gravedigger who needs his spade to survive. Coster on the other hand is exploding with emotion. He curses throughout his rampages way too often, but his profanity just illustrates the effect that the accident had on him.  At first he is raged, hysterical and hard to understand. But as Coster’s character begins to understand and empathize with the hopeless, the harsh wrinkles and bright red color on his face fade to a pale white. His expressions relax, and he can talk about the nameless “red doek” calmly and in a reflective manner.

Credits to Richard Termine/Boneau/Bryan-Brown via Bloomberg

Since there is only a two-man cast, the story often feels like a monologue. It takes a while to get going because it takes some time before the viewer starts understanding Coster’s outbursts. But once that obstacle is overcome, both the dialogue and script of the play overtake the viewer and shows the true power of the play. There is nothing on stage to distract the viewer from the conversation and the well-delivered lines. The costumes were tattered clothes, ripped and nothing eye catching at all. The lighting was simple: a bright light for day and a blue moonlight for night. Everything was motionless in the background to allow the viewer to focus on the intensity of the dialogue between Hanabe and Roelf. This way the viewer walks away with a powerful message about the struggle and hopelessness of Apartheid, but also how in the end, we are all the same.

Athol Fugard, credit to BoneauBryanBrown.com and Gregory.C

“This is the graveyard for the ones without names.” As light gradually brightens up the stage, Leon Addison Brown, who played Simon Hanabe the grave keeper, opened “The Train Driver” with his first line. The story went on as the protagonist appeared on the sanded floor. Both of the actors memorized their lines perfectly, along with the almost exact replication of a graveyard as the setting, credited to the Production Stage Manager Linda Marvel, tied the whole production well together into a piece of art.

The story was about the train driver Roelf Visagie (Ritchie Coster). He had failed to stop the train when a South African mother committed suicide with her child in front of his train. On stage, instead of showing the suicide, Athol Fugard, the playwright of this show as well as other shows like “Blood Knot” and “Coming Home”, revealed the scene mixed with feelings through the main character. Roelf interminably asked Simon for the body of a nameless woman with a baby while babbling about the incident over and over again.  He talked in such an anachornic way with phrases like “I think I killed her” everywhere as part of the act throughout the play. Often time, the whole play felt like a monologue though there were two characters. The movement and the emotions hidden in the lines reveal the contradicting feelings the protagonist had ever since the accident.

As a political piece, “The Train Driver” underlay the theme of Apartheid while fluently illustrated the surface conflicts of the story. The play was actually inspired by a real life event, in which a mother was forced by her living conditions to commit suicide with all three of her kids. During the 90 minutes, it is hard to not notice the various symbols and lines illustrating the continuous poverty and disparity among people in South Africa, especially among black people, , such as “unable to make a cross for the nameless ones because the wood would be taken for fire”, even though Apartheid had ended for a period of time. Once again, this time also as the director, Mr. Fugard had brilliantly merged the guilt and many other feelings into the lines of the main character, which was presented flawlessly on stage by Ritchie Coster.

However, one major shortcoming occurred as the show went on. The language used in the play was very redundant. Though sometimes it was to reinforce the theme of the story, most of the time it was just unnecessary. Instead of grabbing the attention of the audience, the repetition pushed the focus of most people away when it occurred. In other words, the redundancy was very “influential”— in a negative way.

Though I would actually enjoy this play much more if I can understand that heavy South African accent of theirs. Otherwise, the ideas and the scenes shown in “The Train Driver” were very powerful, and most importantly, you won’t regret your 25 dollars.

(background information credited to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athol_Fugard)

Through his play The Train Driver, Fugard coerces his audience to focus on the issue of apartheid in South Africa. The entire play revolves around an event where a black mother commits suicide, with her child, by standing in front of a train. The Protagonist, a white train driver, Roelf (Ritchie Coster) has his life torn apart when the guilt of the incident consumes him. The mental trauma of the accident builds fury in Roelf and forces him to find and confront the woman’s at the graveyard where she was buried, which is where he meets Simon (Leon Addison Brown).

The setting of the play was in itself an appropriate representation of the influence apartheid had throughout the divided country. A dull graveyard, where tombstones were replaced with debris, was used as a fictitious resting ground for blacks and served as the epicenter of Fugard’s play. The sand was polluted with dirt, shards of glass, and rusted metal. In the middle of the entire land stood a humble little shack, which Simon, the black caretaker of the graveyard, called home.

Interestingly enough, Fugard decides to omit the presence of a physical antagonist in his play. One might say that the unnamed woman who committed suicide or the briefly mentioned gang took on the role of the antagonist. However, Fugard still refrained from including the conventional presence of an antagonist, perhaps to stress on the effect the accident had on Roelf and focus instead on how he would ultimately confront the situation.

To tackle the issue of apartheid, Fugard incorporates several subtle, but effective, fragments into the story. Other than the issue of race in the graveyard, Fugard includes a scene where the local gang may be angered with a black man and a white man interacting. He also reveals a little about Roelf’s life before the accident and leaves it to the audience to juxtapose that one with that of Simon’s. Unfortunately, Fugard doesn’t relate the situation of apartheid in Roelf’s time to present day, where it has improved but many question to what level.

Fugard throws his audience directly into the center of the story by providing a limited amount of background information. The audience is left engaged, wondering, “What is going on?” As the play continues, we are able to peel away at the story. We find that, before the incident, the characters come from rather stereotypical backgrounds but change throughout the play.

Fugard elaborates on the characters and the story line with the use of costume design. The ragged clothes reflect the endless suffering that Roelf has endured. His spoiled attire mixes with his sweat and obvious intoxication to bring a powerful presence on the stage. While Simon’s bulky and grubby coat mirrors his modest lifestyle.

In an attempt to shed light on Roelf’s frustration, Fugard makes frequent use of profanity and vulgar language throughout the entire play. Instead of pointlessly throwing around adulterated language, Fugard shrewdly uses it to engross the audience and simultaneously convey Roelf’s rage. The power of the script resonates throughout the theatre.

Unfortunately Ritchie Coster’s acting was unable to keep pace with the intensity required for Roelf’s character to be properly portrayed. Leon Brown maintained a more tranquil quality, required for Simon’s character. To dilute sometimes silent and stretched scenes, Fugard adds portions of humor to Simon’s character, making him rather enjoyable to watch.

Fugard concludes the play with finally bringing Roelf to peace with what has happened to him. Although certain parts of the play may seem confusing and unconnected at times, Fugard brings the play full circle. I left the theatre, shaken by a powerful and riveting performance.

Poignant screams of an emotionally distressed man reverberate against the walls of the theater.

“Who put all this junk on the ground?” he cries, standing on a barren land of sand and waste. Pieces of rusting scrap metal and old appliances scatter the ground, forming clusters here and there atop of heaps of sand. His eyes search the face of the black gravedigger, pleading to find an answer. Why do the bodies of the dead rot below mounds of sand in this waste ground, not wept for, not honored, not remembered? Why did a suicidal woman shatter his life during her own death? And where do the remains of this nameless woman lay?

There is no answer.

Anthol Fugard’s The Train Driver awakes your emotion unlike any other theater performance. It grabs you by your clothes and takes you to a place where human misery has no asylum: a graveyard of sand and garbage, where only the nameless and unwanted lie buried.

Surprisingly, this place is not hard to imagine. The seats in the Perishing Square Signature Center are so close to the stage that within minutes, the audience is integrated into the performance.

There were no flashy costumes, flamboyant characters, or extravagant set design. Instead, simplicity created something very realistic. Especially noteworthy was the control of lighting to suggest the time of day and temperature. The lights shone brightly at what seemed to be noon, hitting the characters so intensely that it seemed to make their skin perspire with sweat. To represent night, a single dim light shone over Simon’s tin house while the surroundings were encased in darkness.  Even the air felt cool, as if the temperature had been intentionally changed within the theater.

The actor Ritchie Coster convincingly portrayed the last few days of a South African train driver who, after accidentally killing a woman and her child, is overcome by trauma.

Roelf (Ritchie Coster) descends to the stage with a slumped back, uneasy steps, and an unrecognizable murmuring. Though his Boer accent is thick and his words are sometimes indiscernible, his riveting portrayal of emotion fills in the gaps of the story. Through incessant rambling, bursts of outrage, and impulsive jerks, he identifies his need to Simon, the old gravedigger, to find the woman that he killed. Leon Addison Brown, playing Simon, fits the stereotype of a haggard old man almost too perfectly. Wearing a dirty beige janitorial uniform, he moves about the set slowly. He seldom speaks, yet his deliberated and well-enunciated words are redolent of his many years of struggle. Though Brown is not old, he does a good job at portraying a character advanced in years.

Photograph from Signature Theater

One of the most memorable moments, not entirely unlike the others, occurs when Roelf runs from grave to grave, rearranging the rocks upon them to form a cross. Though he is exhausted from insomnia, he scurries about the graveyard. He drops on his knees before each mound of sand, forcefully picking up the surrounding rocks and slamming them into the center of each grave. The veins on his arms bulge out, the sweat on his back shines underneath the bright light, and frantic expressions run through his face. Whether it be rearranging rocks or imploring Simon to remember where he buried the nameless woman, Roelf fights to understand the other way of life in South Africa.  What he finds is a life without hope.

After moments of agonizing self-hatred, Roelf leads the story to a very predictable climax by claiming the unknown woman. He realizes that he has the same fate as the woman, regardless of their different colors or status within society. Shortly following is what seems to be a second climax, this time filled with sensationally blinding lights and booming sounds that draw everyone back with a gasp.

A social commentary, The Train Driver reflects on the lasting impact of the apartheid in South Africa in the early 21^st century. For those who do not have background knowledge about the play, it is very difficult to understand that it revolves around the greater theme of apartheid. Regardless, it is quite memorable. Lacking a distinct hero or villain, it shows life as it truly is: without explanation.