| What: Her of Perfidy When: November 10–28, 2026 Where: The Antique Theatre & Bar Bookings: theantique.co.za/show/herofperfidy Writer and director: Louis Viljoen Starring: Emily Child Design: Kieran McGregor |
Her of Perfidy is a luscious title of the new play, by Louis Viljoen, starring Emily Child. It is a great fit that the psycho thriller is making its debut in the gorgeous Antique Theatre & Bar in Kloof Street, with its plush red seats. Kieran McGregor’s design – a table, booze and an incline – a strip – an overpass? funnel? sets up the murky space for a mercurial protagonist who is telling her story. Who is the perfidious one in this story of sex and desire (or desire and sex?), death and betrayal?
It is murky in the fog but it is also a space to play, real or imagined. Multi award winning Emily Child gives another mesmerising performance as the narrator, woman who is utterly alone. Her flat is her cell – her prison. There are no clues as to what she does for a job, her backstory. There are no photos. What has led her to be alone in the dark? After the working day; she clambers up to her flat on the 5th floor, tripping always on the last step, fumbling for the keys. Staying alive, she craves human connection, human discourse. She gets that as she offers her name “as a prize”. But, is there pure deceit in this connection? I don’t want to plot spoil, as to what happens so I won’t reveal more.
Louis Viljoen’s luscious writing slices and dices through the story, with ripped rhymes, broken and split. There are shades of Shakespeare, mashed with Porn Hub and Only Fans pages. Emily Child as the woman, pants and whips through Viljoen’s dissonant poetic rendering. It is a lot of lines and she barely takes a breath, word perfect, jitterily lyrical and emotional. The woman is aroused, perhaps on the verge of erotic asphyxiation? Her state of arousal, disrupts the image of the blank, unresponsive person, we see in the beginning. Cantilevered with the juicy sex, is intrigue and suspense, violence, predators and predatory behaviour and the break down and breach of trust, friendship, desire – and connection. I thoroughly enjoyed this play. As I write, I am mulling over the implications.
✳ Emily Child in Her of Perfidy, written and directed by Louis Viljoen, The Antique Theatre & Bar, Cape Town, November 10–28, 2026. Pic: Andrew Roux. Supplied.
