22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A buddy comedy that takes on apartheid
Odd couples are a durable storytelling device. Who better to outline one character's particulars than their total opposite? With 'Kunene and the King,' playwright and star John Kani aims to demonstrate far more than the mere differences between two men.
The 82-year-old artist, whose legacy of activism onstage stretches back more than half a century, attempts to coalesce broad, thorny arguments about the fraught history of apartheid South Africa into this two-hander now running at Shakespeare Theatre Company. It's a noble undertaking and an unwieldy one, not least because the old timers he imagines butting heads aren't just stubborn but impervious to change.
