Consider for a moment the humble playbill. It’s been endangered by the QR code, victimized by dense dramaturgies and relegated to countless recycling bins within moments of final bows. At its best, though, the playbill provides a critical dictionary to help us understand the particular language of a performance we’re about to experience.
Shakespeare Theater Company’s (STC) production of “Kunene and the King” benefits immensely from its playbill, and that’s a genuine compliment. The play explores the experiences of two South Africans, one Black and one white, with an attention to minute authenticities that might escape the average American audience. Along with informative placards in the lobby, the playbill provides the historical and biographical context that allow us to appreciate John Kani’s play on its own, deeply personal, terms.
“Kunene and the King” follows gray-haired nurse Lunga Kunene (played by Kani) as he treats Jack Morris (Edward Gero), an elderly white Shakespearian actor with advanced liver cancer. In three compact scenes covering about two months, we see Kunene struggle to reconcile his duty to care for Morris with his justifiable repulsion at the dying man’s casual racism and elitist superiority.
Together, the two commit to maintaining Morris’s health long enough that he can play the title role in an upcoming production of “King Lear” — a final star turn that seems to mesmerize both men in their own ways.
The play does not shy away from conflict. Intimate and brisk scenes (directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson) help reveal the social and political gaps between the characters. There’s a throughline of humor but it’s always accompanied by moments of physical and verbal violence. That’s not unlike real life — we’re neither in constant conflict nor agreement with those who care for us most. Neither are Kunene and Morris.
Kani’s considered performance puts Kunene’s internal tension front and center. As a caregiver, he mirrors the audience’s empathy for the visibly ailing Morris. He patiently administers tea and medicine and, on occasion, offers buckets into which his charge can violently vomit.
But as a Black South African man, Kunene excoriates Morris’s slew of microaggressions and his subtle and not-so-subtle nostalgia for the apartheid era. Kunene’s dual personas — one tender and sometimes bewilderingly apologetic, the other angry and physically intense — coexist seamlessly.
For his part, STC veteran Gero (“The Lehman Trilogy”) endows Morris with real presence that elicits our affection, even as his prejudices make us uncomfortable. Gero delivers lines from “King Lear” with an old-school forcefulness that helps us understand why Kunene might be drawn to the idea of his patient’s final performance.
He’s also surprisingly haunting and sympathetic as a dying man losing control of his body. Equally, Gero’s bombastic take on Morris channels his character’s complete lack of introspection. He never reflects on how his alcoholism likely broke apart his family, nor has he reconciled to a changed world in which white minority rule is a thing of the past.
Ultimately, “Kunene and the King” explores the extent to which we, as individuals, should stand in for bigger groups or ideas over which we may not have much control. The storyline does not offer definitive answers, which seems fitting. But at the same time, Kani’s work is undoubtedly an allegory, constructed in a way to force stand-ins for South Africa’s Black and white communities to interrogate their country’s past and present. And, in that sense, the play seems to claim that, yes, we do all represent ideas, just as much as we represent ourselves.
That implication may not sit well with everyone. In the end, though, “Kunene and the King” can be appreciated as an affecting story about two aging men grappling with their pasts. The script takes advantage of a pathos-forward storytelling loaded with poignant details — stories from school, lost loves, professional highs that reveal how far the characters have fallen — that are immediately relatable, even outside the play’s potentially unfamiliar context.
That context, though, is fascinating. The play seems to channel Kani’s truly remarkable experience of apartheid and his long-standing engagement with Shakespeare. This background is described in the playbill, along with a guide to South African history and politically loaded idioms in the script. It’s well worth a read, as “Kunene and the King” is both entertaining and meaningful to experience.
“Kunene and the King” has been extended through March 23 at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre, 450 7thSt. NW, Washington, D.C., with performances Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets start at $35. For tickets and information, call the box office at (202) 547-1122 or visit ShakespeareTheatre.org. Run time is 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission.
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