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It probably seems like I spend all my time in the theatre at the moment. And I probably would if I could.

Tonight I was offered a preview ticket for Kunene and the King at the RSC in Stratford - a two-hander tour de force (105 minutes without interval) with two of South Africa's great actors: John Kani, who wrote the play, and Antony Sher.

On the surface, the play is about the relationship between a white actor dying of cancer - who is learning his lines for King Lear which he will never perform - and the black nurse who is his live-in carer.

Immediately under the surface, the play is an exploration of apartheid and the last 25 years of 'post'-apartheid. At times the play creaks a bit with the burden of all that the author wants to show us, but mostly it is astonishingly good at holding its weighty content and still keeping the audience engaged in the developing relationship between the two men. Enough is said about King Lear for the audience to get the parallels but I rather wished I'd studied it, as my companion had.

I last saw these two actors together ten years ago, also in Stratford and also exploring power (im)balances, in the best production of The Tempest I've ever seen, with Sher as Prospero and Kani as Caliban (and his son as a sprite-like Ariel). This feels a bit like a development of their relationship in that play.

Important stuff, power, and who has it.