For three young South African actors, the opportunity to participate in a new South African play,... A 'symbol of love'

For three young South African actors, the opportunity to participate in a new South African play, especially an acclaimed one written by someone of their own age group, is a very big deal indeed.

One has returned from London, while another has breached a five-year hiatus from the stage to star in Juliet Jenkin's The Boy Who Fell From The Roof.

"There just hasn't been anything like it probably ever," says Francesco Nassimbeni of the play that has just returned from the Main Festival at Grahamstown and which will be presented at the Artscape Arena until August 5. "It is so different from mainstream writing, very fresh and witty," he adds.

When I enquire about the individual challenges that they faced playing their characters, they are almost of one voice that it was plain sailing.

Jenkin's play concerns the story of best friends Georgina (Alex Halligey) and Simon (Nassimbeni), two precocious teens at the wrong end of high school.

. Things are complicated even more when Johnson's mild-mannered mathematics student Leonard enters the fray and Simon falls in love for the first time.

Even with this premise, Nassimbeni considers it much more than just a coming-out story. "I don't think of it as a coming-out story as much as I think it is a coming of age story," says the actor.

"I think a lot of the tension in the play comes from the fact that my character feels that people have taken 'gay' away from actual gay people and Simon feels reluctant and uncomfortable to conform to anyone's stereotype of what his sexuality and his identity should be."

Halligey adds that Georgina and Simon's friendship is a defence mechanism against the rest of the world, "one that is very opinionated and critical and anti-everything, but also funny and witty", she says.

Far from being the villain of the piece, the one who poses the biggest threat to the friendship at the heart of the play, Johnson says his character is instead a symbol of love.

"We've been lucky recently to have had quite a number of new plays, but nothing I bet that came from a real literary standpoint," says Halligey, who returned from London to star in the play.

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