The Train Driver

Singing to ghosts may not seem like the most entertaining pastime, but for this man, it’s all he’s got. As he slowly walks through a graveyard strewn with pieces of junk and trash, he utters a haunting, low melody that is meant to keep angry ghosts - and people - away.Whether the song successfully keeps spooks away is part of the skeletal story of The Train Driver, Athol Fugard’s 2009 play currently in performances at the Pershing Square Signature Theater. Inspired by a news article of a poor young black woman in South Africa who killed herself and her three children by standing in front of an oncoming train, The Train Driver explores the emotions of Roelf Visagie, the driver of that train. Wracked with guilt over the incident (which Fugard changed to a woman and one baby, strapped to her back), Roelf is obsessed with finding the body of the woman and his search takes him to the graveyard of Shukuma, a squatter camp on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, South Africa.At the graveyard, meets Simon Hanabe, the caretaker of the graveyard who buries the unnamed and unclaimed bodies. Roelf demands to know where the woman is buried but Simon claims he doesn’t remember; Roelf then refuses to leave until Simon recalls the location, determined to stand above the woman’s grave and scream at her until he has cleansed himself of his grief and anger. Suffering from a severe case of Post Traumatic Shock Disorder, Roelf is haunted by the memory of the woman and his marriage and family are suffering. Simon pleads with Roelf to leave because he fears a white man in a squatter camp where poor black people live will be in danger, but Roelf refuses to listen.Directed by Fugard, The Train Driver is an emotionally resonant production but its lack of plot and action weigh it heavily and at times it is too repetitive and heavy-handed. Simon welcomes Roelf into his humble shack of a home and Roelf shares his story in exact detail (the monologue is said to be six pages long), and while Richie Coster gives an excellent performance as Roelf, the character does seem self-indulgent at times. Leon Addison Brown has much less to do as Simon other than respond to Roelf’s speeches but Brown given Simon a measured compassion and dignified silence that is admirable. The two do connect but a true bond never forms due to the vast social divide between them. (As Roelf describes why he tore down his family’s Christmas tree in a late-night fit of rage, Simon warms his dinner -  a single can of beans - over the flame of a small candle.)It is this social divide that Fugard highlights in the script;as Roelf stays with Simon his awareness of the living conditions grows and he explains his thought process - in great detail - while wandering the graveyard alone at night as he realizes why the woman killed herself and her child. The poverty and desolation of the area is devastating.“I’m thinking about it all the time now,” he says to her spirit, “trying to imagine what it was like for you. It is very dark in Simon’s shack when he blows out the candle, so I lie there in that dark, and I think to myself: Was it like this for her?”Christopher H. Barreca’s set design of a desolate, barren graveyard is certainly a place one could imagine spirits haunt, and as Roelf ponders why no one claimed the woman’s body, the loneliness in the room is palpable. And while the conclusion is a bit too mystical for such a solemn topic, delivered in a heavy-handed way, one can understand why Simon would choose to sing to ghosts rather than be alone in the graveyard night after night.