Very little happens on stage in A Lesson From Aloes….

The deep mistrust between the three characters is not created by the action of the play or in any way resolved at its end: much more terrifying, their bitterness and suspicion are simply revealed and then thinly covered over as the work draws to a close….

The people in A Lesson From Aloes are victims of South African repression. Yet the play is not a cry of outrage or protest. Fugard's pessimism leaves no room for leftist pieties….

The violence in A Lesson From Aloes is suppressed violence, not the violence of revolutionary politics or of a repressive state, but violence that the characters turn against themselves and that divides them from one another: Steve's suspicion of his once-trusted comrade and the bitter envy that passes between Piet and his wife. Fugard is less concerned with South African...