| What: Season of two plays by Gavin Werner at the Masque, Cape Town The plays: Meeting Murphy, performed by Brent Palmer and Chris Van Rensburg; Spanish Steps, performed by Gavin Werner and Dianne Simpson When: April 8-18, 2026 Where: The Masque, 37 Main Rd, Muizenberg, Cape Town Bookings: Quicket Tickets: R180 per show, R300 to see both shows on the same evening |
Two plays by Gavin Werner will run co-currently in Cape Town, at The Masque, from April 8-18, 2026: Meeting Murphy and Spanish Steps. Werner performs in Spanish Steps, with Dianne Simpson. He is directing Brent Palmer and Chris Van Rensburg in his new play, Meeting Murphy. Both plays grapple with accountability, memory and how we remember and re-shape narratives. Werner: “One looks at the present-day consequences of certain behaviours, and the other looks at where those patterns begin. Together, they form a kind of conversation across time.” Werner gives insights:
TheCapeRobyn: Please tell us about the journey (process) of developing Meeting Murphy, your new play which is being staged concurrently with your play Spanish Steps (2022). Can you tell us about the process, from page to stage?
Gavin Werner: The seeds of Meeting Murphy were planted while I was staging Spanish Steps in 2022. That play asked what makes good people behave in toxic ways. With this one, I wanted to go further back into the formative experiences that create that behaviour in the first place.
In 2023, I wrote what became one of the pivotal scenes and we performed an excerpt at Teksmark in Cape Town with Matthew Du Bois and Chris van Rensburg. The very positive response told me there was something there. But for a while, I could not quite unlock the play.
The breakthrough came when I had to confront something in myself that I had been avoiding. I had always seen myself as someone who was bullied at school, which is true. But I also had to acknowledge the ways in which I had, at times, been the one doing the damage. And more than that, I saw how resistant I was to admitting that.
That is where the play really started.
Because alongside that, I was also noticing how persistent those school experiences were. I would find myself, in my 50s, still replaying moments from decades ago and feeling them. There was even a kind of embarrassment in that. You tell yourself you should be over it. But when I started speaking to other men, especially those who had experienced bullying, it became clear how common this is. The emotional impact does not go away. It just gets buried.
So Meeting Murphy became a way of exploring that, not just the victim, but the dynamics between victim and perpetrator, and how easily one can become the other.
The process itself was very fluid. I was still writing the play while we were rehearsing it, which meant the actors were part of the development in a very immediate way. Seeing scenes on their feet while they were still evolving allowed the material to be challenged and reshaped in real time.
Dianne Simpson has been a key collaborator throughout. She read early drafts and strongly pushed me toward this play over another project I was considering. She has played a vital role in shaping the dialogue and refining the emotional truth of the piece.
Matthew Du Bois and Chris van Rensburg were involved early on, performing the initial excerpt and later the preview performances. Both have been important contributors in developing the characters and interrogating the material as it was being written.
More recently, Brent Palmer joined the cast in the role of Dave. As a writer himself, he brings a sharp, questioning eye to the process, which has been invaluable as we move toward the final version.
We are now in the final rehearsal phase ahead of the run at the Masque Theatre from the 8th to the 18th of April. It has been a process that has been as much about processing these experiences as it has been about writing a play.
TCR: Did something trigger Meeting Murphy, or is it fictional?
GW: It is inspired by very real experiences, but it is not a literal retelling of any one event.
The play itself is fictional, but the bullying described by the two characters, Dave and Rick, is drawn directly from reality. These are incidents I either experienced myself or witnessed at a boys’ boarding school. So while the encounter at the heart of the play is imagined, the behaviour and the emotional truth of it are not.
In many ways, it began as the conversation I never got to have.
Not just confronting someone who bullied me, but trying to understand them beyond that role. To ask what was going on for them and what shaped that behaviour. Because when you are in it, especially as a teenager, everything feels very clear cut, victim and perpetrator, good and bad.
But with time, that certainty starts to break down.
And part of that process, for me, was also recognising my own role in that dynamic, which is a much harder thing to sit with. It is far easier to hold onto a clean version of yourself than to question the role you played in someone else’s story.
That is really where the play lives.
Because the more I reflected on those experiences, and the more I spoke to other people, the more I realised how common this dynamic is. It is not one story, it is a pattern. Most people have encountered it in some form, whether as the one on the receiving end, the one dishing it out, or often both at different times.
So the play is not about settling a score or recreating a specific moment. It is about interrogating that dynamic and, hopefully, offering some perspective on it.
Particularly for younger audiences. Because these patterns start early and tend to stay with us. And if there is any value in the play beyond the theatre, it is in giving people, especially teenagers, a way of recognising what might be happening while they are still in it, whether they are on the receiving end or participating in it without fully understanding the impact.
TCR: Where is Meeting Murphy set?
GW: The play is not set in a specific place. That is intentional. I wanted it to feel adaptable, because the dynamics it explores are universal. The patterns around bullying, addiction, and memory show up everywhere and are not tied to one location or culture. So it could be a hiking trail anywhere in the world. The setting is really just a container. The real landscape is psychological.
That said, when I picture it as I am writing, I tend to see something like the Drakensberg. But that is more of a personal reference point than a fixed setting.
TCR: Can we talk about toxic masculinity in Meeting Murphy and how the relationship with your father informs your work?
GW: Yes, masculinity, and what we now call toxic masculinity, runs through both plays.
With Spanish Steps, the starting point was a personal one. I was trying to understand my relationship with my father, which was a complicated one. As I have got older, I have come to recognise both the difficulty and the love that were there, and that led me to a broader question. Why do good people, men in particular, sometimes behave in ways that are damaging or destructive?
That play begins with the end result. A man in the present day whose past is affecting how he shows up in the world, and it looks at those dynamics as they play out in adulthood.
Meeting Murphy goes further back. In many ways, it is almost a prequel. It looks at the formative years, particularly the teenage years, and asks how those patterns get set in the first place.
And that is where it becomes more uncomfortable.
Because while Spanish Steps leans toward the idea that behaviour is shaped by experience, Meeting Murphy also starts to question the darker side of things. It pushes into the nature versus nurture debate. To what extent are we shaped by our environment, and to what extent are these behaviours hardwired into us?
When I think back to school, there are plenty of people who gave me a hard time, and I gave other people a hard time too. With distance, I can see the context. We were all under pressure, trying to find our place, and sometimes that comes out badly.
But there are a few who stand out differently. The ones where it is much harder to find a mitigating factor. Where the bullying felt more deliberate or more ingrained.
And that raises a more difficult question. Are some people wired that way? Are there traits that sit deeper than environment or upbringing? It is something psychologists debate, and I do not pretend to have an answer, but it is a question I am interested in exploring.
Because once you move beyond simple labels of victim and perpetrator, things become less clear and more human.
TCR: You’re presenting Meeting Murphy and Spanish Steps as a double bill at the Masque Theatre from April 8–18, 2026. Why did you choose to present them together rather than separately?
GW: Both plays are relatively short, just over an hour each, and they speak directly to each other, which made the decision to present them as a double bill feel natural.
One looks at the present-day consequences of certain behaviours, and the other looks at where those patterns begin. Together, they form a kind of conversation across time.
There is an interval between the two performances, and it gives audiences the chance to experience both pieces in a single evening. They do stand alone, but they also add something to each other when seen together.
My hope is that audiences will go away seeing something of themselves in these characters, whether that is comfortable or not.
Because these dynamics, around masculinity, conflict, and the roles we play in each other’s lives, are not abstract. They are real, and they start early.
If there is a longer-term goal, it is to take this work beyond the theatre space, particularly to younger audiences. Because if these patterns can be recognised earlier, there is at least the possibility of interrupting them.
If we can recognise these patterns earlier, we might not have to spend the rest of our lives unpacking them.
TCR: So Spanish Steps and Meeting Murphy could be tagged as companion plays?
GW: Yes, I think it is fair to describe them as companion pieces.
Both use a similar device: two people placed in a situation where they cannot easily walk away from each other. That forces a confrontation that might otherwise never happen.
I am drawn to that because people often reveal themselves through conflict, and most of us spend our lives avoiding it.
✳ Featured image: Meeting Murphy cast – Chris Van Rensburg and Brent Palmer with (centre) director/writer Gavin Werner. Photo: James Hagen. Supplied.
