Roelf, a train driver, has spent weeks searching for the identities of a mother and child he unintentionally killed with his train. After a fruitless journey through shanty towns, he encounters an old gravedigger named Simon who helps the desperate man unburden his conscience.
What Is the Story of The Train Driver?
Set in South Africa and based on true events, The Train Driver is the story of a troubled white train driver named Roelf who arrives at an unmarked graveyard. Roelf asks Simon, a black gravedigger, to help him search for the grave of a woman and her baby—but Roelf isn’t sure of the woman’s name. As the visitor becomes more and more distraught, he finally reveals that he had accidentally killed the woman and her child as they ran onto the tracks in front of his train. As his story unfolds, Roelf struggles to come to terms with his own grief while Simon, silent and stoic, listens.
"Mr. Fugard, the South African playwright who has chronicled the tortured landscape of his native land for more than 50 years, continues to write with compassion and insight about the social and economic legacies left behind by apartheid."
The New York Times
Charles Isherwood
"[Ritchie] Coster’s performance is heartfelt and believable."
New York Daily News
Joe Dziemianowicz