The miscasting of 31-year-old Ben Beatty as the teenage title character of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold”…and the boys derails the Geffen Playhouse production of the South African writer’s most celebrated play in ways that even the magnificent John Kani can’t overcome.

“Master Harold,” written a dozen or so years before the end of Apartheid and set in 1950, two years after the racist policy became law, is Fugard’s look back at the adolescence of a young man named Hally (Fugard’s childhood nickname) born the same year as the playwright.

Though not precisely autobiographical, “Master Harold”…and the boys (the quotation marks and lower case are deliberate) helps explain how one of South Africa’s most vocal white opponents of Apartheid was formed as it reveals the seeds of the great writer and human being Fugard was to become.

Growing up Caucasian and privileged in South Africa under Apartheid, young Hally (Beatty) takes his racial superiority as a matter of course, and one that he’s probably thought little about.

Yes, the youth appears to have a warm, friendly relationship with Sam (Kani) and Willie (Nyasha Hatendi), the Black waiters who work at his parents’ St. George’s Park Tea Room, in particular with the more educated, father figure-like Sam, but scratch the surface and racism is not far beneath.

For the time being, however, what Hally most needs is Sam’s emotional support and guidance as he awaits the return home of his hospitalized father weeks sooner than expected or advised.

Worse still, not only has Hally’s amputee dad gotten himself discharged before fully recovering from his latest illness, having to stay up all night massaging his father’s gamy leg is the last thing a seventeen-year-old needs on his plate.

As “Master Harold”…and the boys progresses, it gradually becomes clear that Sam has been far more of a paternal figure to the youth than his own flesh-and-blood father ever was, which is why when Hally commits the unforgivable act for which this play is Fugard’s penance, it hits like a punch to the gut.

That’s not to say that “Master Harold”…and the boys isn’t without its flaws. Not much actually “happens” during its 95-minute running time, and given how much talking goes on in assorted South African accents, it’s not all that hard to resist spacing out in its midsection.

Indeed, for this reviewer at least, it’s only the play’s first scene (one that has Sam helping Willie prepare for the Easter Province Dance Championships) and its final fifteen minutes that don’t drag.

Still, when the play is appropriately cast (as it was when the Rubicon Theatre picked a then unknown 17-year-old Daniel David Stewart to play Hally), it can work.

The dynamics are all off, however, when Hally not only looks more or less Beatty’s age but stands a good six feet tall, and though the scion of Hollywood royalty gives it his utmost, it can’t overcome his being all wrong for the role.

Fortunately, under Emily Mann and Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s direction, Kani gives us a Sam who is as witty as he is loving as he is courageous (the complex emotions the South Africa native brings to Sam’s final scenes won’t soon be forgotten) and Hatendi shines too as a man whose outward good cheer masks a life of servitude and racial abuse.

New York-based two-time Tony winning scenic designer Beowolf Boritt has given “Master Harold”…and the boys the most stunning of South African tea room sets (raindrops keep falling throughout the show), and his fellow mostly out-of-town designers’ contributions are equally Broadway-caliber.

Last but not least, ballroom dance experts Koko Iwasaki Nyemchek and Kiki Nyemchek make it entirely likely that Willie and his partner will win over the judges at their upcoming dance competition.

Casting is by Phyllis Schuringa, CSA. Sheldon Frett, Ben Larson, and Harrison White are understudies. Deborah Hecht is dialect and voice coach. Amy Levinson is dramaturg. Colleen Danaher is production stage manager and Rebecca K. Hsia is assistant stage manager.

It’s been said that 90% of direction is casting, and if this is the case, then there’s really not much Mann and McCraney could have done to make “Master Harold”…and the boys work once they’d picked their Hally.  If only they’d gone for someone I could buy as this heartbreakingly vulnerable, deeply troubled teen, I might have been as moved as Athol Fugard intended me to be.

Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood.
www.geffenplayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
April 15, 2026
Photos: Jeff Lorch

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Tags: Athol Fugard, Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles Theater Review