James Wilson takes a look at Boesman and Lena:
The setting looks oddly familiar: A winding road cuts through the expansive nothingness, and the atmosphere is dark and foreboding. Precariously standing in the center of the desolate, muddy terrain is a single leafless tree (or is it a shrub?). Soon, a pair of burdened travelers wearing tattered clothes and carrying the weight of the world trudge into the wasteland. At first glance, they appear to be the tramps from Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, but once this homeless husband and wife duo starts bickering, they seem less like Vladimir and Estragon and closer in comparison to George and Martha from Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. It turns out, though, they are a different pair entirely. They are in fact, Boesman and Lena, the title characters from Athol Fugard's 1969 play currently receiving a lacerating revival by New York's Signature Theatre. . . . |
