THE ROAD TO MECCA
Raven Theatre
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In The Road to Mecca Fugard enters Martins’s life at the height of her depression, but in his version Miss Helen doesn’t kill herself. Instead she triumphs, standing up to the village parson who wants to move her into an old folks’ home. Though Fugard knew of Martins’s suicide, he’s reenvisioned her here as an embodiment of the creative spirit. She glows with an inner light as she communicates her vision to the parson, and in doing so becomes more beautiful and moving than her art.
The Road to Mecca is also an unusual love story. It’s about trust–in oneself, one’s artistic vision, and in the people who support that vision. The person who supports Miss Helen’s vision is Elsa Barlow, a radical British schoolteacher. When the play opens, Elsa has driven ten hours to New Bethesda, worried by an alarming letter in which Miss Helen cries out that she is losing her eyesight, her work, and her home. She announces that she would rather take her own life than continue. Elsa runs to help her friend but also to ease her own grief over a failed love affair and an abortion. Both find strength in their unusual friendship: without Elsa, Miss Helen wouldn’t be able to stand up against the well-meaning Bylefeld, and without Miss Helen, Elsa couldn’t find solace. Both characters are vulnerable, but Reiter’s tough-skinned Elsa provides a nice contrast to Wakefield’s soft, gentle Miss Helen, whose strength emerges gradually.
Director Tom Drummer seems even less certain about it than Mills. And his concept of space and time, like hers, is practically nonexistent. The season is supposed to be Christmas, but C. Edd Lunken’s set doesn’t even hint at what Christmas might be like in a desolate South African town. Drummer’s staging is full of sloppy contradictions: when family members lie down for a good night’s sleep, for example, they keep all their clothes on, but when Ruth lies down for a rest she takes all her clothes off. Then there are such frustrating oversights as characters walking right through imaginary tables and walls. The result is a fragmented production that starts poorly and gets worse.
