Moffie (review) – a bold and powerful reminder of the toxicity of hate and the trauma it breeds

Moffie is running at Riverside Studios from Wednesday, the 5th of June, to Sunday, the 30th of June, 2024. Book Tickets Now.

Five years ago, Oliver Hermanus’s film adaptation of André Carl van der Merwe’s powerful autobiographical novel, Moffie wowed audiences. Van der Merwe’s novel (based on the diaries he kept as a teenager in the 1970s and his own lived experience) brought us the profoundly personal and harrowing story of Nicholas, a gay young man fearful of his sexuality and emerging identity as he was forced into the South African Defence Force through the countries policy of conscription just as conflict raged on the border between South Africa and Angola. Hermanus’s powerful film brought Van der Merwe’s urgent story of lived experience, state-sanctioned hate and oppression, trauma, shame and internalised fear to new audiences worldwide. Now playwright Philip Rademeyer and director Greg Karvellas’s exquisitely crafted stage adaptation of Van der Merwe’s novel takes this lived experience into an intimate, stripped-down performance space, where Nicholas’s experiences, memory, trauma, and hidden love play out in front of you through a one-man performance of such intensity and emotion that it’s power ripples through the audience and stays lodged in the mind long after the eighty-five-minute monologue has ended.

Credit: Daniel Rutland Manners

In the film, Kai Luke Brümmer gave a stunning, heartbreaking, and award-worthy performance as Nicholas van der Swart. In returning to play Nicholas in this stage adaptation, Brümmer takes on a new challenge that many actors would shy away from: eighty-five minutes alone, handling multiple characters and complex, powerful dialogue with no intermission and not even a sip of water! Despite the risks, Brümmer’s urgent and courageous solo performance holds the audience in a vice-like grip as Rademeyer’s exquisite and powerful adaptation of Van der Merwe’s novel unfolds. Brümmer’s ability to jump into several characters through Nicholas’s retold memories is truly outstanding, as is his ability to convey the pain, fear, and oppression, as well as the love he keeps silent in fear of repercussions. Brümmer skilfully navigates the extensive and complex monologue, moving between Nicholas’s early years, teens and twenties with ease while exploring his prison of social oppression, isolation and homophobia with such profound emotion that it is impossible to take your eyes off him as each word trips off his tongue, each life experience is explored, and Nicholas’s inner-most hopes and fears are revealed.

Brümmer’s outstanding performance is further enhanced by Niall Griffin’s stage design and lighting, ensuring nothing distracts the audience from Nicholas’s presence. The lighting beautifully emphasises each emotion, from the soft glows of Nicholas discussing his hidden desires and love to the stark white of a sterile army camp where Nicholas must be anyone but himself to survive. Equally powerful is Charl Johan Lingenfelder’s soundscape, which underscores each word of dialogue while transporting the audience through Nicholas’s memories from his childhood relationship with his stern, unforgiving and brutal father to moments of potential hope and rebirth as he swoons over a boy he hopes, one day, he can have.

Greg Karvellas’s direction is understated yet powerful as Nicholas’s nightmare unfolds through memory. Unlike the film, this is an older Nicholas recounting and sharing his experiences in the hope that no other young man ever has them again; in this intimate recounting of hate, oppression and toxicity, Karvellas introduces brief moments of respite through gentle, poetic discussions on love, as Nicholas allows his inner-most desires and thoughts to find freedom. This creates an atmosphere where the audience feels privileged to hear these thoughts and dreams, as if Nicholas has trusted us in a world where he can trust no one else.

Tackling themes of oppression, denied pride, hyper-masculinity and state-orchestrated and encouraged hate, Moffie is a bold and powerful reminder of the toxicity of hate and the trauma it breeds. It is the must-see play of this pride month as it reminds us that while some authoritarian states built on oppression and hate have thankfully ceased to exist, others still operate freely, with Nicholas’s experiences continuing to be repeated in far too many places in our world.