Boesman and Lena is a small-cast play by South African playwright Athol Fugard, set in the Swartkops mudflats outside of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape.
On 22 June 1970, the US premiere, opened off-Broadway at the Circle in the Square Downtown, starring James Earl Jones and Ruby Dee.
[5] In 1992 the play was revived by the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by Fugard, and starring Keith David, Lynne Thigpen and Tsepo Mokone.
[6] In 1978, Richard Eder of The New York Times described Boesman and Lena as one of Fugard's "masterpieces", along with his plays The Island and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.
Athol Fugard's image of an itinerant homeless couple sheltered within their scrap-heap possessions and awaiting the next official eviction is now as common in New York City, among other places, as it was in the South Africa where he set and wrote his play in the late 1960s.
"[8] Writing in New York magazine John Simon concluded: "This is an important play, no less so since conditions in South Africa have somewhat improved: The misery may now be as much existential as social.