Following an acclaimed London run, this South African story needs to be seen at the Baxter
There were sergeants in the apartheid army who could bark out 30 or more words in an unbroken stream to create an extended insult involving bodily functions, body parts, bodily fluids, animals, familial relationships, and sex.
The most talented folded pejorative phrases into themselves to create linguistic barbs that burrowed their way into a recruit’s psyche to release a slow poison. An exhausted, stumbling recruit was not just a piece of shit, he was a festering piece of shit whose mother had … and then … This had the effect, mostly unconsciously, of making you think that being called just a piece of shit meant you weren’t doing too badly.
Language as weapon, used to degrade and dehumanise. Once one had reached a plateau of detachment – exactly the aim, as detachment is necessary to be able to kill – the creativity of the curses could be seen as amusing. Because after all, although your sense of self-worth may have been stripped, you knew you were not literally the things you were being called. At that point it was a matter of ‘words can never harm me’. But not if you were, literally, one of those favoured insults: a moffie.
In a place where being identified as homosexual meant you were publicly humiliated and treated like an animal before being sent to 1 Military Hospital’s Ward 22, keeping your sexuality secret was a matter of survival. Ward 22 was where the South African Defence Force (SADF) threw you in with drug addicts and the genuinely insane to undergo degrading tests and shock therapy. There were also worse tortures. Chemical castration was a very real possibility, and then there was gender reassignment surgery – almost always botched – which was forced on about 900 homosexuals by the SADF, according to a study by Robert Kaplan.
Although every recruit was called a moffie on a daily basis as it was one of number of common slurs, it was a psychic gut-punch for every conscripted homosexual teenager; a constant reminder to deny their identity, to keep their sexuality secret or face unthinkable consequences. In an environment in which heterosexual male virility of the most toxic type was a prerequisite for worthiness, many young homosexual men – barely more than children – the vast majority of whom had grown up in poisonous patriarchy in which there was not even the hope of a trusted confidant, came to hate themselves. There were suicides.
Moffie is the story of one such young man. Published in 2006 as a semi-autobiographical novel by André Carl van der Merwe, who was a gay white teenager conscripted to fight on the border of what was then-South West Africa and Angola in 1979, it was turned into an acclaimed film by the same name, screened in 2019. Now this harrowing story which is fringed with indomitable hope and streaks of survivalist humour, has been adapted for the stage by Philip Rademeyer and is playing at the Baxter theatre after showing in London’s West End where it has been nominated for four awards.
Directed by Greg Karvellas, the one-man play starred Kai Luke Brümmer in the London run, but David Viviers steps into the role here in Cape Town.
Viviers, always an alluring actor, does a fantastic job here, switching between boyhood under the hammer of a homophobic Afrikaaner father, enduring the abuse and harassment suffered as a raw rookie during basic training, and experiencing the horrors of a conflict he wants nothing to with on the border.
From the opening where he stands under the lights in his browns (the apartheid army uniform) with his ‘balsak’ over his shoulder and his face in shadow under his ‘boshoed’ Viviers, as Nicolas van der Swart, holds us spellbound.
The simplicity of the set, which is a mound of ‘balsakke’ (canvas rucksacks) is an inspired design by Niall Griffin, giving the impression there is a platoon of fellow soldiers just beyond the pool of light, about to burst in at any moment, underscoring the fact that solitude is a rare luxury in the army and shared secrets are always in danger of being overheard. It also allows Viviers to sit, lean, and make small adjustments to the mound to create a simple shift in setting, aided by incredibly fine lighting – also by Griffin – and an evocative soundtrack by Charl Johan Lingenfelder.
Viviers cuts through the spliced periods with ease, and with a masterful subtlety switches in a breath between characters as discrepant as the exhausted rookie and the barking sergeant, or the bullying, sneering father and the fearful, sullen son. But it is the incredibly fine shifts between Nicholas and his fellow tortured conscript that reveal the depth of Viviers’ talent.
The performance was about as close to perfect as you can get, marred only by a couple of questionable directorial choices, which had to do with how the uniform was worn.
Any play involving a uniform, particularly a military uniform which may have once been worn by potential member of the audience, has to be absolutely correct. Because those people know. Because it was drilled into them. You cannot mess with that. And the way those boots were laced was all wrong, which meant anyone who knew, kept noticing them instead of being absorbed in the character and the story. Fortunately the strength of Viviers’ acting helped me to stop thinking about how those looped laces would trip you up five paces into the bush, and instead had me grimacing at the cruelty, shrinking away at the horror, fearful lest anyone overhear these secrets of sexuality being shared, smiling wryly at the desperate humour, and embracing the full vulnerable humanity of the character before me.
Triggered? Yes, most certainly anyone who was forced to don that uniform will be, but along with it comes a reassurance of the indomitableness of the human spirit when it chooses to shun evil, even when shoved into the midst of its brutality.
Moffie plays at the Baxter Flipside Theatre until 27 September then at Woordfees in Stellenbosch from 12 to 18 October.