Blood Knot at Flat Rock Playhouse

Athol Fugard’s 1961 drama Blood Knot holds a revered, albeit controversial place in theater history, and, on the surface, it’s easy to see why. The story of two brothers living in a squalid shack in apartheid South Africa, dreaming of escaping their oppressive confines while skewering the system in their own fraternal ways sounds like a boundary-pushing classic and material worth revisiting on a regular basis.

However, the current staging at Flat Rock Playhouse — the other offering in its current Black Box Series — is a slog, not for reasons stemming from any directorial decisions by Vickie Washington or her talented cast and crew, but from Fugard’s script that makes one question why, outside of historical importance and political bravery, it ever received genuinely positive reviews and has been able to endure.

Though there’s plenty of intriguing buildup as Morris (Arusi Santi) prepares for the return of his housemate Zachariah (Odera Adimorah) from a long day of work, followed by entertaining chitchat concerning mundane topics like the price (and smell) of foot salts, Fugard takes his time reaching anything resembling a conflict. And by late in the first act when Morrie freaks out over the revelation that the female penpal he got for Zach is white, there’s a sense that things should be wrapping up — yet there’s an intermission and an entire second act left to endure.

This failure to engage with the writing is rooted in the plethora of questions that arise from its various plot holes. While there are occasional references to “passing” and one comment by Zach that Morrie looks whiter after returning from an ambiguous amount of time away, their stark difference in skin tone — and Zach’s borderline indifference toward his white roommate — makes it unclear if they’re truly related or merely grew up together in an orphanage or similar circumstances and developed a tight bond.

While there’s a long history of casting light-skinned men of various ethnicities in the role — Fugard was the original Morris and directed a 2012 revival starring the ginger-haired Scott Shepherd opposite Colman Domingo — the lack of clarity regarding the two men’s connection consistently proves frustrating, yet is far from the lone unanswered question that Blood Knot raises.

Why does Zach work while Morrie stays home? Why did Morrie go away and what brought him back? How much does Morrie’s sexuality affect the proceedings? Why did the possibility of the pen pal being white not occur to him? And why would Zach believe that the clearly disinterested Morrie could pull off playing Zach in the penpal’s company when she writes to say that she’ll soon be visiting Port Elizabeth and would like to meet?

The answers remain mysteries, but the powerful performances by Santi and Adimorah — experienced from mere feet away on the Leiman Mainstage — keep even the most mentally checked-out theatergoers hopeful that something will change and help justify the production and Blood Knot’s legacy. The same goes for the high-quality production design and top-to-bottom technical execution, down to Yetunde Felix-Ukwu’s impeccable dialect coaching.

But despite a similar “dream deferred” tragic turn as A Raisin in the Sun, which predates Blood Knot by two years, and a series of jarring moments as the pair role-play racist scenarios — again, why? For the audience’s sake? For the characters’? — there remains a feeling that the story might have proven far more effective as a tight, one-act play and not the unfocused, quasi-interminable sit that it actually is.

Blood Knot runs through Oct. 9. For details and tickets, visit FlatRockPlayhouse.org.

(Photos by Scott Treadway/Treadshots, courtesy of Flat Rock Playhouse)