by Cyril J. Davey.
The scene is the lounge of the Bruces' missionary bungalow in Africa, at the present time.

At 8.45
The drums are beating in the African forest. The night is dark and full of foreboding. Somewhere there is the crackle of flame and the smell of burning wood as the terrorists set fire to the houses of the villagers who refuse to join them in their fight against the domination of the white man. But for Janet Bruce, the wife of missionary Peter Bruce, who has spent fifteen years teaching in Africa, the sounds do not bring so much a sense of fear as a feeling of sadness; sadness at the realisation that the work both she and her husband have been doing is being threatened by these outbursts of terrorism and defiance. But not all the white residents are able to take this charitable view of Africa-and indeed in Janet's neighbour, Christine Gould, there is nothing but bitter hatred for the country she is forced to live in, and which
she neither trusts nor to which she wishes to contribute anything.
Against this background, with racial and family conflicts brought into sharp focus by two African half-brothers who are as divided as the country itself, Cyril J. Davey, himself a Methodist clergy-man, has written a play that presents two aspects of a problem about which it would be difficult to remain either indifferent or complacent.
(Rowan Ayers)