“Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is a look back at the horrors of South African apartheid

New Brunswick’s Crossroads Theatre Company has roared back to life with a revival of Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, the 1972 play authored by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, which won Tony Awards in 1975 for Best Play and Best Lead Actors. Directed by Artistic Director Ricardo Khan in collaboration with Kani, the last living member of the playwriting team, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead still simmers with all the righteous power of its original American production.

The play begins with Styles (Atandwa Kani), a photographer who runs a small studio in the township of New Brighton, South Africa. He regales the audience with news items from the local paper, which sets the play in the early 1970s. He also relates anecdotes from his days before opening his studio and a humorous tale of photographing four generations of one family in a single photo.

Interrupting Styles’ monologue is a customer, Sizwe Banzi (Kelcey L. Watson). He wishes to send a picture to his wife, who lives in a distant town. But the name he gives Styles is Robert Zwelinzima, and as Styles prepares to take his photo, the scene shifts to several days prior, and we see Sizwe’s story as he lived it.

Sizwe came to New Brighton seeking employment but has met with rejection. The town authorities have stamped his passbook – an internal passport proscribing where one can live, work, and travel — accordingly, and have given him three days to leave. Sizwe is taken to an illegal tavern by Buntu (also Kani), a friend of a friend with whom he has been staying. The naive Sizwe, overwhelmed by the obstacles in his path, despairs over how he can provide a better life for his family.

Atandwa Kani, John Kani’s son, shows amazing versatility portraying both the sunny, optimistic Styles and the hard-headed, realistic Buntu. Kelcey L. Watson gives a magnificent performance as Sizwe Banzi. You can feel the anguish and pain of a man at the end of his rope, bound under an unjust and unjustified racial caste system, yet having to keep it all carefully tucked away just under the surface.

Set designer Beowulf Boritt has left most of the stage space empty, with a brick wall behind a lattice of girders upstage and a few pieces of furniture to suggest Buntu’s abode and Styles’ shop. Unfortunately, Victor En Yu Tan’s lighting design left something to be desired, with the actors having to deliver some of their lines in partial darkness.

Sizwe Babzi Is Dead is rightly acclaimed as one of the major plays produced during South Africa’s reign of apartheid. And its power and relevancy are as vital and needed today as it was some 50 years ago. This production shows promise of a new, revitalized Crossroads Theatre Company under the visionary guidance of Artistic Director Ricardo Khan and its new Managing Director, Ezra Ezzard. I cannot more strongly encourage you to see the masterwork that is Sizwe Banzi Is Dead!

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead is presented by the Crossroads Theatre Company in the Elizabeth Ross Johnson Theatre at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center through June 14, 2026. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to crossroadstheatrecompany.org.