Tramway Road

Tramway Road, by British playwright Ronald Harwood (1934-).

The play is set in 1951, one year after the Population Registration Act was passed in South Africa. Tramway Road had a special notoriety for all those who lived in Sea Point, a white residential suburb of Cape Town. It also exerts its influence over all the characters in this play: an expatriate English couple, Arthur and Dora Langley; Emil, a young man with dreams of becoming an actor in London; and Jacob, a Cape Coloured house servant who is king of his local Coon Carnival troupe

Tramway Road, and all that it represents, inevitably shatters their hopes, their peace and their ideals. Tramway Road was first performed at the Lyric Theatre in 1984 with Freddie Jones, Richard E. Grant, William Vanderpuye, and Annette Crosbie

“In his touching new play [Ronald Harwood] catches a rare and powerful mood of British expatriates and South African meritocrats locked in a landscape neither party reveres” ~ Michael Coveney, Financial Times

“Tramway Road ... demonstrates how fragile are the fortifications of liberal and bookish conscience when they are assaulted by the forces of racist intolerance” ~ Milton Shulman, Standard

“Mr Harwood is very good at the pathos of exile ... The play offers a totally plausible, splendidly comic picture of the two shambling rootless English ex-pats” ~ Michael Billington, The Guardian

“...[in] this thoughtful, humane play ... Mr Harwood has something telling to say about a tragic situation” ~ Francis King, Sunday Telegraph

Add to cart

A Baxter Company '85 production directed by Leonard Schach, presented at the Baxter Theatre in 1985. Cast: Keith Grenville, David Dennis, Soli Philander, Brenda Wood.

Source: Barrow, Brian & Williams-Short, Yvonne (eds.). 1988. Theatre Alive! The Baxter Story 1977-1987).

Return to T in Plays 1 Original SA Plays

Return to T in Plays 2 Foreign Plays

Return to South_African_Theatre/Plays

Return to Main Page