LA Weekly
Thursday, May 2, 2002

Saturday Night at the Palace
Recommended, Pick of the Week

By Martín Hernández

South African playwright Paul Slabolepszy’s absorbing anti-apartheid allegory still packs a timely wallop after 20 years. Inspired by an actual incident and set seven years before that system’s official 1989 demise, the play concerns two young Afrikaners who’ve been stranded at a diner outside Johannesburg after a night of carousing. Like many privileged white South Africans who battled to preserve their vile policy of supremacy, Vince (Shawn Lee) rationalizes his sense of entitlement and blames his life’s failures on others, most notably the dark-skinned kaffirs. His equally hapless yet more tolerant pal Forsie (Eric Pargac) knows better, having been witness to the arrogant Vince’s loutish, larcenous conduct. Drunk on booze and racist venom, the bitter Vince takes his frustrations out by viciously taunting September (Sean Blakemore), the diner’s sole Zulu waiter, while Forsie furiously tries to defuse the potentially fatal conflict. Slabolepszy’s inordinate focus on Vince and Forsie’s moral debates and comedic banter leaves September a mere cipher, yet director Dámaso Rodriguez and his stellar cast rise above this limitation, with Blakemore’s stoic September and Pargac’s tormented Forsie the standouts. Rodriguez’s commitment to realism, from Melissa Teoh’s meticulous roadhouse set to the ensemble’s authentic accents and dialects, buttresses the tale’s resonant universal message.

Furious Theater Company at the Armory Northwest, 965 N.
Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena; Fri.-Sun., 8:30 p.m.; thru May 19. (818) 679-8854.




Los Angeles Times
Friday, May 3, 2002

THEATER REVIEW
Savage Drama From Furious Theatre

By F. Kathleen Foley, Special to The Times

"Saturday Night at the Palace," the inaugural production of the Furious Theatre Company, may not be a perfect debut. However, it is an ambitious and richly rendered effort by an impressive new group that bears watching.

The group's new performance space, part of a former plastic-container factory in Pasadena, has been handsomely reconfigured into a 99-seat black-box theater, the backdrop for set designer Melissa Teoh's minutely rendered re-creation of a flyspecked roadhouse.

The technical production, including Christie Wright's unobtrusive lighting, is first-rate, although the acoustics of the space, which has been masked off by black draperies within a cavernous shipping and receiving area, are difficult. But the success of this production hinges on the material itself, South African playwright Paul Slabolepszy's savage apartheid-era drama, seen here in its U.S. premiere.

In the play, September (Sean Blakemore), the Zulu manager of a small burger joint on the outskirts of Johannesburg, is just closing up for the night when his regular routine is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Vince (Shawn Lee) and Forsie (Eric Pargac), twentysomething white youths who have apparently broken down on the road. The bitterly racist Vince, an emotionally disturbed delinquent with dreams of becoming a soccer star, is the flashpoint for the explosion to follow. But it is Forsie, a childlike "nice guy" whose egalitarian principles ultimately extend only as far as his own self-interest, who most shocks and dismays us.

At first, director Damaso Rodriguez's staging is inappropriately broad, as are the performances, with the exception of the pitch-perfect Blakemore. Vince initially comes across as a swaggering stereotype, while Pargac is so comically obtuse that he smacks of Graham Chapman in his Monty Python "Village Idiot" routine. Fortunately, both Lee and Pargac gradually assume the authority and momentum necessary for the agonizing denouement.

Why it took so long for Slabolepszy's harrowing parable of powerlessness and privilege to reach this country is a mystery, but the Young Turks at Furious are to be commended for their choice, as well as this difficult but rewarding first production.



Backstage West
Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Saturday Night at the Palace
Critic’s Pick

By Var Smith

One can only speculate why it took nearly 20 years for Paul Slabolepszy's award-winning South African play to have its professional premiere in the United States, but it was worth the wait to have the Furious Theatre Company present it as the inaugural production. The work is powerful, and so are the performances. In 1982, seven years before the official end of apartheid, two young Afrikaners glide their broken-down motorcycle up to a remote roadhouse outside Johannesburg. A Zulu waiter is closing up for the night. In working with this story based on a true incident, director Damaso Rodriguez skillfully builds the conflict and tension between the blacks and whites to a breaking point--and an hour and a half later one of them is dead.

The Zulu waiter (Sean Blakemore) is the focus of Vince's (Shawn Lee) hatred and wrath. Forsie (Eric Pargac) tries but fails to keep the conflict from escalating. Vince is relentless in his taunting. Just when we think he's reached his limit, he comes up with another way to humiliate and debase. Unemployed, rejected by housemates, and kicked off his soccer team, Vince blames the blacks for everything wrong with his life. He is an exploding loose canon, and tonight the waiter has the bad luck of being on his menacing, self-destructive path. Underneath, the waiter is seething, but he must get through this night by succumbing to Vince's degrading words and games. No one is immune to Vince's wrath. He undercuts Forsie's dreams and
relentlessly ridicules him with salacious stories about his girlfriend. Giving highly physical and emotionally charged performances, these three accomplished actors are mesmerizing with their South African accents and dialogue sprinkled with Zulu and Afrikaans slang.

Melissa Teoh designed the authentic funky diner on the generous stage. Lighting design is by Christie Wright, costume design by Sara Hennessy. Overall this is an impressive debut for the Pasadena-based company.