Except for the overexplicit title, all is well with Athol Fugard's "Master Harold" … and the boys. Fugard has now perfected his way of writing plays about the tragedy of apartheid; he avoids the spectacular horrors and concentrates instead on the subtle corrosion and corruption, on the crumbling of the spirit for which the cure would be heroic action that may not be forthcoming, and which the blacks try to assuage with the salve of dreams, the whites with the cautery of oppression. For Fugard, the ultimate evil is the weakness, the cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate. The play springs two wonders on us: It is devastating without being depressing, and it is pungently specific without any loss in universality….

"Master" Harold has a tricky, touchy relationship with Sam and Willie, the two black employees…. Not only are the relations between the white boy and the black men who helped him grow up an intricate network of generosities and withholdings, of frustrations and humiliations (not entirely one-sided, though the boy is selfish and the men are a trifle, just a trifle, too good), but even the interaction between Sam and Willie has its curious yet credible complexities. The psychological sharpness, dramatic scope, and existential suggestivity that Fugard wrests from humble but never trite ingredients are a precious, precarious compensation for the ills of being. The author cannot legislate justice for South Africa or the rest of the world, but his plays are among the few small, doughty justifications for carrying on….

And Mr. Fugard directs with the same insight and control with which he writes. There is, despite the noble metaphor of life as ballroom dancing, a certain dearth of language here: These characters, almost by definition, cannot talk poetry, which only a few masters, such as Beckett, have been able to extract from rock-bottom prose. O'Neill, for instance, never quite could, yet it did not finally keep him from greatness. What Fugard offers is wave upon wave of comprehension, compassion, and achingly autobiographical honesty that create a poetry of their own. (p. 76)