Theater: Yearning For Ritual Pieties THE ROAD TO MECCA

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Spoleto's brief production would not have been possible were it not for London's, which provided the other two members of the cast. Yvonne Bryceland, a fellow South African for whom Fugard wrote the role of the folk artist, won an Olivier Award, the West End's equivalent of a Tony, for her performance. At Charleston, she once again convincingly blended the workaday and the visionary, making an audience see glory even in Douglas Heap's set -- in truth, reminiscent of a tatty disco. Her manic scurrying in denial of advancing age was a shrewd counterpoint to the prematurely world-weary languidness of Charlotte Cornwell, repeating her role as the friend, a disillusioned teacher of mixed-race youths. The Charleston version, which Fugard terms definitive, achieved the resonance between the mundane and the metaphysical that characterizes all his best work. From Spoleto it deserves to move intact to Broadway.