Dream of the Dog *** TNT

Delayed since last year, South African playwright Craig Higginson’s short new play, Dream of the Dog, which premiered at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, finally makes it to the Finborough in a taut, strongly cast production directed by Katie McAleese.

In KwaZulu-Natal, shortly after the millennium, elderly white couple Patricia and Richard are getting ready to leave the farm that has been their home for decades. She’s physically frail but mentally astute; he’s suffering from progressive dementia as he grabs a spade, intent on digging up the sadness of their life together.

With their bags already packed, a dog’s warning bark announces the unexpected arrival of “Look Smart”, the garden boy whom Patricia nurtured and educated until, 15 years ago, in his teens, he ran away and completely vanished.

Now their roles are reversed. Employed by the development company which purchased the farmstead, he’s brashly confident, sometimes threatening, as he confronts his onetime mentor about the truth – as he sees it - behind the terrible death which precipitated his sudden disappearance.

As these representatives of the old and new regimes try to make sense of what really happened, the on-going legacy of Apartheid is exposed – in the polite dignity of Gracy Goldman’s black servant, Beauty, in the resentment of Ariyon Bakare’s “Look Smart”, still seething angrily beneath the sheen of his sharp, corporate suit, and in Janet Suzman’s rational, resigned Patricia, forced to revisit and re-evaluate the disappointments and inequities of the personal and political past.

Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. (Earl’s Court Tube) 0844 847 1652
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Untl 22nd May Tickets £15 - £18