The relevance of an arrest under the Immorality Act

Daniel Nelson

Is this story relevant, asks Diane Page, director of the revival of Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality Act, set in apartheid South Africa and revived at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Some of South Africa’s “born frees” – who make up 40 per cent of the population – know little about the country’s shocking history, and in Britain more than one in 10 people are in an inter-ethnic relationship.

So a black man and a white woman having secret sex doesn’t spark the interest it once did, and a policeman staking out their meeting place sounds simply like a degree of prurience deserving of medical attention.

In addition, a few weeks ago a monologue at the Lyric Hammersmith on the relationship between a white man and a black woman (and his racist father) in west London today looked more relevant to a contemporary audience than Athol Fugard’s 1970s play. 

Yet Anthony and Cleopatra is set in the forgotten past and we still watch it. These things happened. Indeed, South Africa’s ban on interracial sex was lifted only in 1985.  We need to remember. As Page says: “The wounds in history have to be acknowledged, they have to be confronted, they have to be questioned, it’s the only way that we can move forward.”

Remembering is particularly important given that many societies, socially if not legally, still create barriers against mating on a number of grounds, including religion.

Changed times also lead to changed interpretations. I hazily recall watching the play half a century ago and (probably self-righteously) enjoying its affirmation of humanity and its mocking of the absurdity of stiff-necked, sexually repressed white authority. Fugard, of course, is a far cleverer writer than that, and the issues of poverty, class and race in Frieda and Errol’s exchanges still resonate today – between foreign NGOs and poor local people as much as between lovers.

Perhaps in this in-the-round production Errol’s hunkiness – on top of the fuller character that Fugard gives him - shifts the balance between the two lost souls that I remember.  (I had also forgotten that Errol’s other name is Philander.) But every production of a play casts different shadows.

+ The play will be livestreamed on 23 and 24 September (from  £15) and on demand 5-8 October.

* Statements After An Arrest Under the Immorality Act is at the Orange Tree Theatre, 1 Clarence Street, Richmond, TW9, until 2 October. Info: 8940 3633/ orangetreetheatre.co.uk