Solomon and Marion

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Like London Road, Sea Point, another South African season play at Assembly, Solomon and Marion is a two-hander that swells the heart with its story about people polarised by age, race and economic circumstance finding unlikely understanding. But alongside the optimism, a despairing and very personal note about South Africa’s struggle with violent crime is struck.

Marion (Dame Janet Suzman) is a sickly white English widow, living alone in a run-down house outside Cape Town in quiet despair. Her estranged daughter Annie lives abroad, and her son Jonathan is seven years dead, after being carjacked and brutally murdered. Into this cursed home, without knocking, walks young black street urchin Solomon (Khayalethu Anthony), son of Marion’s former housekeeper.

Determined to lift Marion’s torpor, across several more visits he persistently bestows upon her his own special kind of generosity, offering all from chicken feet snacks to a promise to “borrow” a TV so they can watch the World Cup. Marion’s initial antipathy and suspicion eventually melts into warmth and trust. But Solomon’s actions have personal motive, and a shocking revelation about Jonathan’s death emerges.

The story invokes the tragic memory of young South African actor Brett Goldin, who was carjacked and killed in 2006 while starring in a Suzman-directed version of Hamlet. Which makes its end note of cautious hope all the more remarkable. For all their differences as actors—Suzman an Academy Award-nominated veteran, Anthony a 25-year-old debutant—they play their parts with equal humanity and truth reflecting the need for simple companionship in a dispiritingly turbulent world.