Award-winning solo show The Moon Looks Delicious From Here, written and performed by Aldo Brincat and directed by Sjaka Septembir, continues its run at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg until this Sunday, 27 July, and it’s not to be missed.
Winner of the 2024 Standard Bank Silver Ovation Award and the Special Jury Award at London’s Bitesize Theatre Festival, the production is a deeply personal and poetic journey through Brincat’s life as a queer, first-generation South African of Indian descent. Drawing from memory, family history, and South Africa’s political transitions, the performance traverses decades and identities with humour, heartbreak and grace.
At the heart of the piece is Brincat’s powerful embodiment of characters from his childhood, including his parents, which he says, “is actually quite profound.” “In a sense, I am channelling them, not playing them,” he told MambaOnline. “Even now after its approximately 60th performance, I still come off stage emotionally wrecked but healed – content.”
While the play is described as “largely autobiographical,” Brincat notes that he granted himself some poetic license. “At every point I had to ask myself whether it was ok for me to say the things I am saying – putting words into the mouths of my family members who are no longer alive,” he explained. “In the end, I was satisfied that I represented my family in the most accurate way possible.”
Themes of queerness, belonging, heritage, and “otherness” are sensitively handled in the script, which Brincat says he wrote “without judgement or critique.” He adds, “Here we all were, trying to figure out how to be in a South Africa – me with a massive secret – which is moving swiftly toward white supremacy and uber-fascism… So I suppose it is appropriate that my queerness should come out here and now.”
Brincat believes the play’s themes are as vital now as ever. “Perhaps now more so than ever, as the world reverts to fascism in such an aggressive manner,” he said. “While I find older audiences resonate with the play and its first-hand experiences of apartheid, the younger generation respond to the historic and intergenerational trauma.”
The evocative title, The Moon Looks Delicious From Here, speaks to the interconnectedness of human experience, across time, place, and identity. “The moon represents our shadow selves,” Brincat shared.
“When I was studying theatre in Paris, I would speak to my mother in Durban on a landline, and there were times when we would both look up at the moon at the same time. That experience, a modern phenomenon, showed how deep connections bind us, no matter our lived experiences.”
The production has resonated with international audiences as well. After a performance in London, Brincat was met with “a knot of people who linger long after the bulk of the audience have left, and they want to talk… brimming with stories of how they got to be in their part of the world.”
He hopes young queer people navigating their identities and heritage see themselves in his story: “I hope they will be inspired to understand that they are not alone in their journey. If they can hold on – be still – and reflect, that perhaps solutions to their struggles will become evident.”
The Moon Looks Delicious From Here is a luminous and layered theatrical experience that speaks to anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong, and anyone looking to understand how personal stories mirror the larger story of a country in transition.
Catch the final performances at The Market Theatre before it closes on Sunday, 27 July 2025. Tickets are available via the theatre’s website or box office.
