(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 5 April 2002

James Patterson
I think that the idea, the concept of trying to put South Africa, old and new, black and white, male and female, in a single room is a really fascinating idea. I think that, because so much of the play seems to be autobiographical, that that makes it very interesting, and the fact that he seems to need to almost be claiming his place in the future, and the past, of South Africa with it, is interesting.

But I actually found it kind of off putting in a way, and his ego. I found the fact that two women in the play are just so in love with this man who doesn't seem to be worthy of it. Also that he's supposed to be a poet and yet the language to me was very flat, not very poetic. In the end, I wound up sort of, if it wasn't Fugard, would it have been produced?

Elaine Showalter
I thought this was slow, I thought it was static, old-fashioned. I thought it was really very soap opera. They were really melodramatic lines and situations. I was totally fed up with the idea that the women are hanging around waiting for him. I agreed with James. I don't think he comes across as an artist at all. It seems to me it is a self-pitying and self-justifying play. In so far as it is autobiographical, embarrassing for Fugard at this point.