I am standing outside the hallowed walls of the Market theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg. This is the place where Athol Fugard – surely the greatest of South African playwrights and one of my all-time theatre heroes – staged plays including Hello and Goodbye and The Island. The latter was co-written with fellow theatre greats, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Now it’s the turn of a little-known English writer and his play Breakfast With Mugabe. This is, as they say, one of the days of my life.
In 2001 my script felt like urgent work. Elections loomed in Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe was reportedly unleashing terrible violence in his bid to cling to power. To many in the UK “President Bob” had long been a monster. But what, I wondered, created the monster?
