A deeply personal account, combining storytelling with dramatization, Lall Lalchund (Jason Sardinha) is in some ways like most teenagers in most contexts within living memory – frustrated with the unfairness of his life, he doesn’t think much of his own father, and finds a rebellious cousin’s behaviour to be admirable, even if he is not inclined to replicate it. Between 1860 and 1911, more than 140,000 labourers were brought from India to South Africa, to work for white settlers in sugar plantations. While much has been said and written about the anti-apartheid movement itself, this show takes a different angle from the usual one about the ‘whites’ versus the ‘coloureds’, and explores the tensions between different non-white communities. When Lall’s family home, amongst others, is subjected to arson, it wasn’t because some white people were taking matters into their own hands. Indians were driven out by Africans and forced to relocate to other areas. Some even went overseas.
For Lall, watching his peers and acquaintances improve their lot in life, one way or another, whilst his own family continues in relative poverty, is difficult to deal with, especially when he goes off to university and sees the affluence of other students, particularly that of a love interest. There are some positive recollections of his formative years, and acknowledgements that whatever his own difficulties were, he knew of people, even neighbours, who had things considerably worse going on.
The show’s programme claims Sardinha plays Lall and thirty other characters, and there’s no reason to doubt this assertion. In what is sometimes quite a physical performance, Sardinha gives distinct voices to most of them: it is feasible, indeed probable, that siblings of the same gender, for instance, are going to sound similar to one another. Being introduced to so many people in a one-act show means there isn’t much time to get to know them all properly. The more memorable ones, as one might reasonably expect, are those with strong personalities, for good or for ill. Seeing all sorts of characters, including young and old, family members, his school principal, police officers, and so on, come to life so convincingly meant that it was easy to forget there was only one person on stage.
As I began by saying, it’s a deeply personal story, and by default, it is devoid of much socio-political commentary that might be useful now, a generation after the events in question (the play was first performed in 1999, the year Nelson Mandela stepped down as president). Then again, people can read up about PW Botha and FW de Klerk and all of that later on. A confident and assured performance, delivered at pace, and maintaining the audience’s interest from start to finish.
Review by Chris Omaweng
Out of Bounds is the coming-of-age journey of Lall Lalchund, a South African Indian teenager grappling with the turbulence of adolescence within a vibrant and chaotic extended family in Inanda, Durban. Through Lall’s eyes, we are drawn into a heartfelt quest to find oneself in a society fractured by race, tradition and expectation.
Set against the charged backdrop of 1980s apartheid South Africa, this masterful work is an exploration of identity, family and cultural heritage. As resonant today as it was as its debut, Out of Bounds is a moving journey through memory and identity.
Cast: Jason Sardinha
Written by Rajesh Gopie
Directed by Clare Stopford
Lighting Designer: Beril Yavuz
Show Operator: Tom Thornhill
Shooting Star Studios presents
OUT OF BOUNDS
Jack Studio Theatre
22 July to 2 August 2025
