Kunene and the King
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

VETERAN white South African actor Jack Morris (Anthony Sher) is due to crown his career by playing King Lear. Diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, from the moment his medical carer Lunga Kunene (John Kani) turns up, their respective attempts to find a working relationship are beset by their country’s shared history.

In Kani’s two-hander, their progress towards recognising one another as individuals and not as products of their corrupted past is infused with humour and mediated through confronting cultures, languages and, fascinatingly, as the stricken Jack struggles to learn Lear’s lines, Shakespeare.

Just as Shakespeare’s character has to learn to see his world through unclouded vision and find a shared humanity, so Jack edges towards a freedom born of mutual respect. Similarly, Kunene has to assert his professional pride and racial self-respect to cope with an awkward patient wallowing in sardonic disgust at his situation.

“White people voted for Nelson Mandela because they wanted protection from the anger of black people,” Kunene explains in one telling exchange. “I voted for Mandela because I wanted a better future. You got your protection. Did I get my better future?”

Marking the 25th anniversary of the end of apartheid, that question will have a sharper edge when the production moves to Cape Town’s Fugard Theatre.

Kunene and the King works as a kind of unfinished epilogue to the magnificent 1970s Siswa Bansi is Dead and The Island, devised by  playwright Athol Fugard and actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, plays which dangerously and courageously challenged the cruelties of apartheid face on.

Sher, Kani and director Janice Honeyman not only share nationalities but long working and social relationships. This results in performances which transcend the world of theatre and hold the mirror up to the way history shapes human relationships at every level.

In many cases, it nurtures an infection that can blind its victims to their common inheritance and the moving final scene offers hope but no certainty.

Runs until April 23, box office: rsc.org.