Martin Banham

South Africa: Athol Fugard, Three Port Elizabeth Plays (The Blood Knot, Hello and Goodbye, Boesman and Lena), O.U.P., 1974; with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, Statements (Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, The Island, Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act), O.U.P., 1974

Ntshona, Statements (Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, The Island, Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act), O.U.P., 1974. Before S izwe Bansi Is Dead created such a powerful impression with British audiences in i ~7q., Athol Fugard’s work had been noted mainly in passing, in critical circles, and staged only perfunctorily outside South Africa. The six plays offered in these two collections remind us that Fugard’s work as a playwright reaches back to the early ig6os, and indeed that one of his most powerful pieces, Boesman and Lena was

Reviews : New Soyinka Play: Wole Soyinka, Death and the King's Horseman, Eyre Methuen, 1975

Perhaps, of the two sides of the coin of ’Indian identity’ that of the Indian in a changing India and of the Indian in a foreign country Indian novelists appear better qualified to handle the former. The background at least, with the description of the typical Indian festivals like Holi or Gokul .Asthami, the heat, the squalor, and the splendour of Indian cities like Bombay or Calcutta come out appealingly, as in Santha Rama Rau’s Remember the House or Anita Desai’s Tloices in the

Reviews : Eighteen Plays

of coincidence or of common heritage, but neatness apart such an approach would not, I think, be either informative or relevant. The plays are, therefore, noted in relation to the areas from which they come, and such comparative judgements as seem pertinent are made within this more manageable context. The only comment that should be offered with an all-embracing gesture is one of satisfaction that so much dramatic literature is becoming available in English representative of the attitudes and experiences of countries of the present or past Commonwealth. These eighteen plays come from India, West Africa, East Africa, and South Africa, and yet represent, even in their considerable diversity, only the tip of the iceberg of Commonwealth and South African playwriting.

African Literature II: Nigerian Dramatists in English and the Traditional Nigerian Theatre

The recent publication of Ulli Beier’s English adaptations of three plays by the Yoruba dramatist Duro Ladipo and the performances outside Nigeria of Wole Soyinka’s latest plays in English, Tbe Road and Koiigi’s Harvest, seem to provide evidence that though Soyinka writes his plays in English, he is using dramatic techniques that have long been familiar in the popular Yoruba theatre. Can one see here an in-