Moffie review – gripping one-man show evokes a gay

Riverside Studios, London
In this adaptation of André Carl van der Merwe’s novel, Kai Luke Brümmer puts in a formidable performance as the South African conscript beset by homophobia

Closeted 17-year-old Nicholas van der Swart is conscripted into the South African Defence Force in the late 1970s, and plunged into a gruesome border war. The carnage makes his memories of a springbok hunt with his uncle look like scenes from Doctor Dolittle. But there’s another conflict which the SADF is prosecuting: the war against homosexuality.

Moffie, adapted by Philip Rademeyer from André Carl van der Merwe’s 2006 novel, takes its title from a homophobic slur that is as ubiquitous here as the throb of chopper blades. Alone on stage before a mound of military kit bags, to which he tellingly adds his own baggage, Nicholas describes the years spent concealing his desires. The baroque punishments of the psych ward await those who fail.