Playwright: Margaret Lewis
At: Stage Left, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.
Phone: (773) 883-8830; $18-$22
Runs through: April 3
The village schoolteacher's wife is being haunted by the ghost of her missing husband. Of course, this is South Africa, where intercourse with the supernatural—in plays, at least—is commonplace. But this is 1996, and James Mxenges' disappearance two years earlier orchestrated by the Colonialist government's 'Hairy Arm' squads, appointed to round up suspected rebels. And so Mae goes before the post-Apartheid tribunal, against the advice of her embittered sister Cassandra, to question Gideon Krug, the officer (now seeking amnesty) who holds the key to the truth.
What's our statute of limitations on political villains? In 2004, Chinese communists are portrayed kindly only under a heavy coat of Brechtian Objectivity, post-Soviet Russians as childlike but friendly allies, and Nazis still must be painted as wholly evil. But just as Shirley Gee's Never In My Lifetime renounced BOTH the warring factions in Belfast for their brutal tactics, so does Margaret Lewis' Burying The Bones hint that the Afrikaner that we Americans were conditioned for years to hate and the native Freedom Fighters we championed were equally oppressive of innocent citizens.
The structural devices Lewis employs in order to keep her story moving sometimes make for lapses in logic—in the beginning, Mae insists that her spouse is alive, despite his spirit (who ought to know) saying otherwise. And James demands to have his body buried, though the circumstances of his death render this impossible. When we finally learn his fate, and come to understand that it hardly matters how he died or who killed him, we cannot help but be disappointed by his motive in initiating Mae's (and our) inquest, given the high expectations it engenders.
The cast delivers their nebulous dialogue with unflinching conviction in impeccable dialects, navigating the argot-laced idiom as if born to it. (A glossary in the playbill would help us do likewise.) Sinners being more fun to play than saints, John Sanders' suave Gideon and Demetria Thomas' intense Cassandra dominate our attention, as Frances Wilkerson's Mae and Ansa Akyea's James do our sympathies. And Gary Alexander and Abu Ansari, playing the Commission's advocates, dutifully cue up questions and answers—all making for an emotionally gripping, if intellectually dissatisfying, evening.