Martin ThomassonIt is 1997. A train leaves Scotland bound for London. On board, John Josana, a journalist, is reading a book about Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for many years).
The train is crowded. A tall man with a backpack takes the seat opposite John, more out of necessity than choice. Unlike Josano, this man is a ‘chatter’. He canât seem to help himself. John is irritated by the interruption, all the more so, since the manâs accent reveals him as a white South African. Not only is John black, 30 years back his father fled that land, carrying him as a baby, leaving Johnâs mother behind.
There is much anger and hurt.
John has grown up immersed in the knowledge of the injustice, brutality and sheer horror of the apartheid regime. The man now facing him (Marius Moeller) served in the South African army, seeing active service in Angola. Moeller didnât just benefit from apartheid, he killed to sustain it.
Despite the gulf between them, they have things in common, other than the land of their birth. Each ‘lost’ his mother at an early age and, though Johnâs father was a hero of the struggle whilst Mariusâs was literally a Nazi, both men carry emotional scars from their fathers.
Marius Moeller has a dreadful tale to share. Is he seeking forgiveness from John? Whatever the case, this meeting will reverberate into both menâs future lives.
Developed by writer Paul Herzberg from his award-winning, 10-minute monologue (also produced by Elysium Theatre as one of their âCovid-19 Monologuesâ) this version of The Moth is a two-hander running at 90 minutes (plus an interval). Sad to say, it doesnât really work.
The piece is overly didactic, too determined to inform – both about the shameful past deeds of racist regimes, and about the personal histories of the two men. Paradoxically, as act one closes, we possess many facts about John and Marius, and yet it feels like we do not know them, at all.
Act two is more of the same. John rants at Marius. Marius rants at his dead father. Both men, it feels, constantly rant at the audience. In the immortal words of U2:
ââŠI canât be holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt.â
Neither character displays an ounce of charm (and their psychologies, for all the apparent soul-baring, remain vague). John has a great career, a lovely wife, three beautiful children. We see a single slide of the happy family, on the steps of their impressive Hampstead home, but they barely feature in his narrative. Marius was treated with abysmal cruelty by his ruthless, bigoted father. Does this explain or in any way excuse his actions? We are not really prompted to ponder that difficult question, because there is no real sense of a character to be reckoned with.
The words that come off the page are more diatribe than dialogue. Director Jake Murray has not been able to help Faz Singhateh (John) or Micky Cochrane (Marius) wrap flesh and blood around the skeletons the writing provides.
The important question of redemption and forgiveness has been dealt with before (and with much greater insight and success) in Simon Wiesenthalâs essential book, The Sunflower. Spend your money on that. You wonât regret it.
The Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana, famously observed that, â[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.â Current events suggest there is an urgent need for outstanding drama to tackle our fading memories of fascism (of which apartheid was just one manifestation). Sadly, this is not it.
Steve Timms
Sarah Hemming
Carmel Thomason