“Nothing Gentle Can Survive Here”: ‘MOFFIE’ Comes Home After London Theatre Acclaim

This September, MOFFIE, the searing stage adaptation of André Carl van der Merwe’s groundbreaking novel, makes its South African debut at the Baxter Theatre. Following a critically acclaimed world premiere in London in 2024, where it earned a five-star Guardian review, the production arrives not as a war story, but as a reckoning—with masculinity, with memory, and with the ghosts we carry long after the uniform comes off.

Based on Van der Merwe’s powerful and semi-autobiographical novel, MOFFIE is not simply a coming-of-age tale, nor is it just another military memoir. It is, at its core, a story about survival. About what it means to grow up in a society that fears difference. About what it costs to remain silent, to mute who you are and what you feel.

The production runs this September at the Baxter Flipside in Cape Town, presented by the Common Humanity Arts Trust in association with the Baxter Theatre.

For many South Africans, MOFFIE first entered the public consciousness through the publication of Van der Merwe’s 2006 novel—an unflinching, deeply personal account of a young gay conscript’s experience in the apartheid-era military. The story was later reimagined as a powerful dance production, which premiered at the National Arts Festival in 2015, adding a physical, almost visceral language to its themes of repression and survival. It then reached global audiences in the critically acclaimed feature film directed by Oliver Hermanus and produced by Eric Abraham, the founding producer and sole funder of the now closed Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. Abraham now returns as producer of this landmark stage version. Bringing the story full circle, back to its roots, and to a South African stage for the first time is director Greg Karvellas who recently staged the South African Premiere of Dear Evan Hansen.

Adapted for the stage by award-winning writer Philip Rademeyer, MOFFIE features celebrated actor and author David Viviers in a deeply personal solo performance. Known for his emotionally rich work across stage and screen—as well as his literary achievements—Viviers brings both gravitas and vulnerability to the role. On stage alone for 85 minutes, he becomes both narrator and survivor, guide and ghost.

From Page to Screen to Stage

While many still associate MOFFIE with the 2019 film by Hermanus—praised for its unflinching portrait of institutionalised homophobia—the stage version strips the story down to its psychological core. Here, what unfolds is less cinematic drama and more a direct line into one man’s mind, one man’s memory.

Though set within the brutal structure of the SADF in the 80’s, this is not a traditional war story. It is about private battles: fought in silence, in showers, in stolen glances, in suffocated tears. It’s about the emotional landmines that live in the body long after basic training ends. And it speaks powerfully to the reality that, for many in the LGBTQ+ community, safe spaces were rare in 1980s South Africa—and remain fragile even in 2025.

A Soundtrack of Memory and Resistance

Joining Viviers is acclaimed sound designer Charl Johan Lingenfelder. A former SADF conscript himself, Charl brings not only technical mastery but lived experience. His sound design is layered with memory—of drills, helicopters, fear, silence. It's a sonic landscape that doesn’t just underscore the action but inhabits it.

Charl’s earlier work, including the deeply affecting film Kanarie, mined similar themes of queerness, conformity, religion, and repression. In MOFFIE, his sound world is joined by Niall Griffin’s evocative set, lighting, and AV design, which places the audience directly inside the memories, mind, and trauma of Nicholas van der Swart, the play’s protagonist.

A Homecoming with History

There’s something deeply resonant about MOFFIE coming home now. Many of the men who lived through that era—gay or straight—are now in their 50s and 60s. Some have never spoken of what they endured. Others have spent decades trying to make sense of it. This production doesn’t ask for confessions. But it does offer recognition. It says: you were there. It mattered.

It also explores the ripple effect of trauma, toxic masculinity, and sanctioned bigotry—and why, in a nation still reckoning with its past, these stories must not be forgotten.

For younger audiences, MOFFIE offers something rare: a glimpse into a world where masculinity was policed with violence, and empathy was its own form of dissent. It asks: how far have we really come?

The Power of Theatre to Make Us Remember

At its heart, MOFFIE is about memory—the kind we bury, the kind we inherit, and the kind we finally dare to name out loud. It’s about becoming visible in a world that demanded your invisibility. And in that way, this is not just a stage revival.

It’s a reclamation.

MOFFIE runs this September at the Baxter Flipside, presented by the Common Humanity Arts Trust in association with the Baxter Theatre.
Tickets are R150–R240 via Webtickets.

Don’t miss this unforgettable homecoming of a story that still echoes through the lives of many—and demands to be heard. DM

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