In the following review of the New York production of Athol Fugard's play Valley Song, Jack Barbera overviews the play's plotline and examines the various ways in which the playwright is categorized by reviewers and critical essayists.

What is clear from Athol Fugard's new play, Valley Song, held over at the Manhattan Theatre Club through January 21, is that the only box in which the playwright's work belongs is the stage itself, especially if the set is designed by Susan Hilferty, who has been working with Fugard for fifteen years. She has marked off a rectangular arena for the conflicts in Valley Song and painted it the colors of the semiarid Karoo, where the story takes place. Curtains hanging from horizontal rods at the rear are the same colors, suggesting a low line of hills in the distance and the endless vistas of the region, Where earth and...