But apartheid is no more - which does not mean that prejudice has disappeared. In “Have You Seen Us?’’ Fugard tries to extend his scope to the subject of anti-Semitism. Yet despite a raw and committed performance by Waterston, who takes his trademark lugubriousness into a deeper realm, “Have You Seen Us?’’ is dismayingly facile in a way that Fugard’s earlier work never was.
Waterston plays Henry Parsons, a South African expat in his mid 60s who lives in Southern California (Fugard, 77, resides now in San Diego). In his film and TV work, there has often been a certain stiffness to Waterston’s performances. His characters seem to labor under the weight of their own rectitude, and, as with district attorney and perpetually disappointed idealist Jack McCoy on “Law & Order,’’ to convey a sense that everyone else has been measured and found wanting.
There’s no idealism to Henry Parsons. Here, Waterston seems liberated by the chance to put his mournful countenance in the service of a genuinely misanthropic character, and to these ears at least, the actor nails the South African accent.
Henry, unshaven beneath a slouchy fisherman’s hat, introduces himself to us in a lengthy opening monologue during which he informs us that he recently experienced a “life-changing’’ moment. We then flash backward a few weeks, to the sandwich shop in a strip mall that Henry patronizes on a regular basis, and learn that Henry is an embittered academic who has discovered that students no longer want to learn what he has to teach.
But his trembling hands and wobbly head reveal that he is coping with more than the indifference of undergrads: Henry is an alcoholic. His drinking has cost him his family, which is back in South Africa. In other words, he’s an exile twice over.
