Lily Middleton

This is the first performance of the play, and Amy Jephta’s writing is startling. It’s a fast-paced script which has you laughing one minute and shrinking into your seat in uncomfortable horror the next. The racism, and Sihle and Bonolo’s differing reactions to it, are hard to witness. On reading the play text afterwards I see that the Zulu words Sihle speaks in the last few minutes translate as “Remember to be invisible and move slowly so you don’t wake them. Sometimes it is best not to wake them; few things in the world are as dangerous as sleepwalkers.” I didn’t need to understand the words as they were performed to grasp their meaning.