MR DRUM?
[A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE PLAY]
'Who Killed Mr Drum?' is a play by Fraser Grace and Sylvester Stein, based on Stein's 1999 book by the same name. Stein's book was about 'Drum', the first black magazine in South Africa. It tells how in 1955, shortly after Stein took over as editor, problems arose which caused he and most of his staff to be forced into exile and how it was due largely to the magazine's anti-apartheid stance.) In the play, Stephen Billington played the editor, Sylvester Stein.The New York Times described the plot of the play, this way:
'In 1950s Jo'burg nothing stirs ... IT JUMPS! Can Themba is a man who lives for a party - illegal booze, gangsters slang, the fizz of jazz music and the thrill of a knife fight - all pepper the wicked prose of Drum Magazine's 'Shakespeare of the Shebeens'. And Drum's Chief Reporter, Henry Nxumalo, parties harder than anyone. But now Sophiatown is being cleared for white housing. Henry lies dead with twenty-three stab wounds. And Can's flaunting the law by loving a white girl ... Who Killed Mr. Drum? brings apartheid South Africa's black underbelly jumping to life, and counts the cost of one man's struggle to avoid opposition.'