The Road to Mecca Worth the Pilgrimage

One look at the delightful, eclectic set of The Road to Mecca and you know that you are about to embark on a journey to somewhere unusual. Paper mache animals perch on pebbles bordering a room crowded with sparkling colored candles, odds and ends of flowered furniture. As soon as Janine Poreba and Jennifer Sun walk onstage and begin to speak, however, it is their engrossing performances which overflow the room. Athol Fugard's brilliant script is given life by an extremely talented cast, who bring a piece of South Africa's karoo home to Harvard.

Unlike many of Fugard's other works, in which more prominent racial themes articulate the concerns of a generation of South Africans, The Road To Mecca revolves primarily around the friendship between Helen, an older Afrikaaner woman, and Elsa, a young English-speaking white South African. While there is a subtext of racial awareness in the form of Elsa's activism, this play is really the story of a special friendship between women as they discover the importance of living their lives as they will them to be, and learn how to take on the courage and responsibility to do so. They are, of course, the lucky ones who have the opportunity to make these kinds of choices.

Helen (Sun) and Elsa (Poreba) have known each other for fifteen years, since Elsa was a teenager. Helen is an artist who creates animals and fantastical creatures from scraps and junk in her front yard, which have earned her the distrust and animosity of her neighbors, in addition to the love and respect of a few good friends like Elsa and the toleration of her minister, Marius Byleveld (Artie Wu). Now a schoolteacher in Capetown, Elsa has driven for ten hours in response to a desperate letter from Helen, who is trying to stop the church council from putting her into an old age home. Their relationship is close, but not unobstructed. Elsa expresses impatience with Helen when she perceives "the Afrikaaner in you talking." Helen is bewildered by the stories of social upheaval in the outside world where, as Elsa says, they are "worrying about the bomb being dropped while you all fight about who owns the cherry orchard."

Shaky South African accents aside (they might better have been left out altogether), both Poreba and Sun give inspired performances. As Elsa, Poreba sharply vents her anger and frustration with the world with convincing exhaustion, while Helen's quiet, troubled presence spreads gradually around them in slow, careful gestures. While Poreba's strength lies in her moving, often powerful, expression, Sun's lies in her understated charm and ability to command the scene when necessary. Artie Wu, the third and final member of the cast, does a very good job with a much smaller role as the local minister, successfully drawing out the complex depth of Marius' character in its struggle to maintain faith in himself and his old friend.

Helen's spiritual crisis is, in fact, the focus of the drama, although it is not the kind of spiritualism that Marius can understand. Since she was a child she has been obsessed with candles and their warm, protective light. This evocative symbol guides her eventually to her philosophy that you "should never light a candle carelessly and always make sure that you know what you are doing when you blow it out." These are not words to be taken lightly when you are unsure of or unable to do what you wish to with you own life or when you are trying to change someone else's. Her struggle to retain her faith in a dark world that threatens to overwhelm her is a call for all of them to speak out and reach out to each other. Elsa and Helen's friendship is often trying, as not only personalities but world perspectives clash. But the grace and trust that they inspire in each other and us make just this one evening they have with each other and then audience a memorable one.