Los Angeles Times
- Recommended
"...This may not be obvious to those awaiting another Fugard masterpiece on the order of "Master Harold … and the Boys." His later career has been decidedly minor key, his plays becoming smaller and more intimate with every passing year. But he remains a natural-born storyteller, and "The Train Driver," which is currently receiving its U.S. premiere at the Fountain Theatre, sets us up for a fascinating tale -- admittedly more fascinating in potential than in execution, yet Fugard knows how to whet an audience's narrative hunger."
Backstage
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Stephen Sachs gives the piece a fine and meticulous production on Jeff McLaughlin's wonderfully evocative set, and the two actors bring the characters to vibrant life. Higgins vividly captures the desperation of the white man as he fights for clarity and understanding. And he is well-matched by Ward, whose role is often as listener, but he listens eloquently. And his wonderful face, etched with experience, can simultaneously suggest the naiveté of an uneducated man and the wisdom of the ages. His delight is contagious as he remembers searching for wild honey with his father."
Talkin Broadway
- Highly Recommended
"...Given Morlan Higgins's past remarkable work in Fugard plays at the Fountain, you can pretty much expect him to give an exceptional performance as Roelf, and he does not disappoint. It's an emotionally fearless performance-Roelf enters the scene just on the edge of sanity. Nightmares have driven him to find the grave; his search for it has taken him on a difficult journey; and you know that if he doesn't find this grave very soon, he's just going to explode. And Higgins embraces all of it, from Roelf's somewhat patronizing attitude toward Simon, right on up through his basic human disgust at the way the nameless are buried that wells up in him and nearly makes him forget about his quest. Adolphus Ward presents a good foil for him: his Simon is deliberate and even-tempered in response to Roelf's passionate words; and Ward makes plausible the idea that Simon, although wholly uneducated, might have a little wisdom that can help Roelf."
Stage and Cinema
- Highly Recommended
"...The production is as good as it is because, in Stephen Sachs, Fugard has the director every playwright dreams of finding: one who totally understands every grace note, every signpost, every unspoken gesture, and, through care and sensibility, brings them to life; in short, Sachs's direction is sublime."
LA Splash
- Highly Recommended
"...This year, Athol Fugard's U.S. premiere of THE TRAIN DRIVER is a true testament of how a talented playwright and theatre company can come together to create a story about race, rage, and redemption."
Stage Scene LA
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The Fountain Theatre production of The Train Driver is beautifully acted, directed, and designed. That being said, Fugard's latest drama proved too talky to engage me, despite its brief seventy-five minute running time and a plot hook that ought to have been more compelling than it ended up being."
StageHappenings.com
- Highly Recommended
"...We are a privileged city to have such an esteemed director (Stephen Sachs) and playwright offer the U.S. premiere of THE TRAIN DRIVER (Fugard directed a production in South Africa earlier this year). You would be foolish to miss the magic that comes from such lyrical dialogue; Fugard's words reach your soul, reminding us that the human language, when constructed with such elegance, can achieve an evocative chill akin to the mournful, spiritual wailing of the dogs that howl their existence to the night."
Examiner
- Highly Recommended
"...The overall excellence of this production, however, must be credited to director Stephen Sachs, whose slow and deliberate pacing amplifies the anguish of the train driver and the confused cogitations of the gravedigger. And of course to playwright Athol Fugard, who has provided a gripping and moving vignette of South Africa and brought it for its United States premiere to the stage of the Fountain Theatre, long celebrated as one of the very best little theaters in Los Angeles."
Buzzine
- Highly Recommended
"...For a brief but potent look into the human soul, its sudden awakening, and the dreadful realities that follow the lifting of apartheid, Train Driver is 90 powerful minutes of theater."
Will Call
- Recommended
"...This is a powerful play and a very talky one, performed by two excellent actors. Adolphus Ward is wonderful as the kindly, old grave digger who tends his "sleeping children" with compassion and care. He decorates their sorry final resting places with discarded, rusty auto parts, in lieu of the non-available flowers. He protects the nameless dead from marauding dogs and his meager shack from roving hoodlums. The always brilliant Morlan Higgins is Roelf, a disheveled, tortured white man in search of redemption for a tragedy for which he erroneously believes himself responsible."
Jesther Entertainment
- Recommended
"...Directed by Stephen Sachs, The Train Driver is an intimate portrait of grief and understanding told in the intimate setting of The Fountain Theatre. Both Ward and Higgins do a very fine job (the audience - consisting of many high school students - probably should have clapped a bit longer for the actors then they did) of conveying their characters' situational emotions - and emotional situations - with understatement and breadth of character."
TheatreTimes.org
- Recommended
"...It is a solemn, melancholy piece, adding another two-man, black-and-white drama to Fugard's long list of plays. Perhaps its biggest statement comes in a sly moment to which Sachs wisely avoids drawing much attention. When Visagie arrives, despite the hopelessness he has absorbed, he has not thought to question his faith."
