A Fair Country: Let's Go South Africa

Picture this: you're at home doing something or other when your mother gives you three choices: a) mow the lawn, b) cook, or c) vote for the Republican candidate for president. Not too tough to choose mowing the lawn, right? Now imagine she says instead, "Youre going to live with apartheid, and you're going to like it." This is the situation seventeen year old Gil Burgess faces in Jon Robin Baitz's A Fair Country. His father Harry Burgess is an American diplomat stuck permanently in a backwater of 1977 South Africa, and wife and son begin to get a little too comfortable with beating up and calling the police on their black servants.

A wrench is thrown into the works when brother Alec pays a visit from Columbia school of journalism. Full of righteous indignation at his family's assimilation, he tells them to shape up or ship out. Astonishingly enough, the United States government has just made Harry an offer to rat out Alec's African National Congress friends in exchange for a cushy job in the Netherlands. Harry has a dilemma: he knows South Africa is tearing his family apart, but his only way out is to abuse Alec's trust.

Sadly, Harry is not cut out to be a diplomat. His realpolitik is about as low as it comes. When his government comes calling, he leaves bawling. The rest of the play charts the moral angst and posturing that goes on over the decision. The second act asks the whodunit question: what did Harry choose? I wonder, since they're living in the Netherlands and all. Unfortunately Harry never considers the option of switching careers and saving himself a lot of explaining.

The problem is that, the way Baitz presents it, there are two equally poor choices: either implicitly condone an oppressive regime by caving in to its social institutions or perform a shady act of obedience to a country that sympathizes with the regime. The family is never given a chance to reach a compromise, say by firing their servants or transplanting themselves to an embassy. After Alec arrives, it's downhill into death and destruction for the Burgess family. But, after careful analysis, it's a tragedy that by rights shouldn't happen.

Harry suffers for his decision while the other family members are vindicated in the end. It's not at all clear why that should be the outcome. Alec's solution to apartheid was to refuse the help of the servants around the house and eventually fire them all: hardly a way to lift them out of dire poverty. And he doesn't understand that many factors come into play, like different tribes of Africans not being able to put up a united front. Mother Patrice is obsessed with "reasonable" treatment of native Africans. This consists in papering over deep-seated racism with platitudes about needing servants to help with diplomatic functions. Gil has been living with his parents so long he can do little but watch and conform.

Granted, there were no easy solutions for people with American sensibilities living in South Africa. The Burgesses are fundamentally good people caught up in larger political forces. Ironically enough, Harry wants to take the family to visit Gandhi's house, and he pays the servants more than the British neighbors do. Patrice is a liberal who knows about Che Guevara, even if she brings the name up only to spit it right back at idealistic Alec. Patrice had ideals, but they have precipitated into a wickedly sardonic sense of humor-for example, "What does a woman interested in American art do when they stop making the stuff?" The Burgesses wouldn't be torn about their contribution to apartheid if they werent deeply concerned about its ill effects.

That's why it's all the more remarkable that they are unable to find a solution. Watching this play makes one wish the characters would stop their hedging and start doing their small part to resist. As events have proved, it was not impossible to make South Africa a fairer country.

A FAIR COUNTRY

written by

Jon Robin Baitz

directed by

Anna D. Shapiro

Through Nov. 26

Huntington Theater

written by

Jon Robin Baitz

directed by

Anna D. Shapiro

Through Nov. 26

Huntington Theater