Great Migration

THEATER REVIEW: Coming Home

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Oct 28, 2009

Jim Roese

Arthur Miller once quipped, "The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost." It's an idea that takes flight in the Wilma Theater's affecting production of Athol Fugard's new drama, Coming Home.

Veronica (Patrice Johnson), heroine of Fugard's 1995 play Valley Song, returns from decadent Cape Town to the one-room house in rural Karoo where she was raised by her grandfather, Oupa (Lou Ferguson). She brings her son, Mannetjie (Elijah Felder, at age 5), and reunites with childhood friend Alfred (Nyambi Nyambi) — and then, not much happens in the hourlong first act. Memories are recalled, questions hang in the air, songs are sung.

Act II jumps ahead three years, and suddenly revelations abound about Mannetjie's (now played by Antonio Dandridge) absent father and her plans for Alfred. Although it's a deeply personal story about a fractured family unit, Coming Home also proves an allegory for South Africa's post-apartheid troubles, specifically the AIDS epidemic (which the government said could be cured by eating bananas — bananas!) and inept bureaucracy.

Strength and sorrow radiate from Johnson's petite frame, and her performance soars despite Veronica's suffering, but the story belongs to Nyambi's endearingly naive Alfred and, bravely, to Dandridge's seething Mannetjie. Playwrights trust their work to child actors with understandable reluctance, but the unformed next generation is essential to Fugard's message of hope through, and despite, adversity. The young actor, under director Blanka Zizka's assured tutelage, does not disappoint, matching the adults in intensity as well as convincing South African dialect, coached by Lynne Innerst. His scene with Oupa's ghostly presence, linking the farmer's precious seeds with the words the boy treasures, gives the play a moving finale.

Miller's birds take their time arriving in Coming Home, but when they do, 77-year-old Fugard's dramatic powers — last witnessed at the Wilma in 2007's My Children! My Africa! — prove undiminished.

Ends Nov. 15, $36-$65, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org.

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