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THE STORYACT I It is August 1949, not long after the coming to power of the Nationalist Party in South Africa. The scene is set, geographically and socially, by the chorus and their leader (The Hills of Ixopo). In a small Natal village Stephen Kumalo, the black priest of St. Mark's Church, receives a letter from his brother in Johannesburg that their sister there has fallen into bad ways; also, Stephen and his wife Grace have long had no news from their son Absalom who went to the mines in Johannesburg and Grace is anxious that all may not be well with him. Stephen comforts her (Thousands of Miles) but agrees to go to Johannesburg. At the railway station, he is greeted warmly by Arthur Jarvis, whose father, a neighbouring British planter, is affronted by his son's familiarity with a black, but they agree to differ, and the Train to Johannesburg takes Arthur, his schoolboy son Edward and Stephen away. In the big city, Stephen has found his sister; she will not return to Ndotsheni, but entrusts her little son Alex to him. His meeting with brother John, a shop owner and black political activist, is tense; Stephen learns that his son and John's have been associating and that John has thrown them out, but at least he gives Stephen an address to find Absalom. He is shunted from one place to another, finally discovering that Absalom was in jail, but is now out on parole. In the shabby lodging-house with Alex, he describes his home in Ndotsheni (The Little Grey House). In a dive in Shanty-Town, Absalom's cronies and their girl-friends parody the injustice of a court hearing (Who'll Buy?) and then the men plot a robbery to get money to go to the new gold fields. Absalom's girl-friend Irina, who is pregnant by him, persuades him to stay out of it, but the men, returning, convince him. Stephen comes to her hut with Eland, the parole officer, and once he is sure she really loves Absalom, promises to help find him. She sings of her love for Trouble Man. The break-in is, by cruel irony, in Arthur Jarvis' house, and it is he who is shot dead by Absalom, son of his friend Stephen. In the next scene, Jarvis' father, desperate with grief, hears from the parole officer of his son's noble efforts on behalf of racial equality. Stephen, called by Eland, visits Absalom in jail; when the boy confesses the murder, Stephen has to face the fact that his son will never come home again, and that he will have to break the news to his wife, and the culmination of these events brings a conflict in faith (Lost in the Stars). ACT II John Kumalo tries to persuade Stephen to get Absalom to retract his confession and plead not guilty, and Stephen faces his moral dilemma (O Tixo, Tixo, Help Me!); he goes to Jarvis to plead for intercession, but without success, and then to the devoted Irina (Stay Well), who agrees to Absalom's wish that they be married in prison. At the trial, Absalom's two accomplices lie, but he admits his guilt and repentance, and is sentenced to death. The chorus laments Cry, the Beloved Country before the moving marriage ceremony, conducted by Stephen, and after Absalom's outcry of fear and desolation. Back in Ndotsheni, Alex makes friends with Edward Jarvis, whose grandfather forbids him to play with the black boy. In his own small church, Stephen tells the congregation he is leaving, because his son's crime against the village's only white friend has caused him to question his faith. They beg him not to go, but his agony is only solved in the touching final scene, at the moment at which Absalom's execution takes place far away, when James Jarvis comes to seek reconciliation.
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Characters
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| Cast: 9 men, 2 women, 1 boy, chorus
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LOST IN THE STARS
