When Peter Hayes performed Martin Moran’s autobiographical monologue about sexual abuse, The Tricky Part, in Grahamstown earlier this year, many in the audience believed Hayes was the playwright – so convincing is his candid and unaffected portrayal. This is the first time Moran has allowed anyone else to perform the work, and in Hayes he has found a perfect doppelgänger.
Hayes has correctly opted to keep to the original, set in Colorado. In a country like South Africa where sexual abuse is endemic, the distance helps keep perspective and facilitates understanding.
Moran was sexually abused at the age of 12 by a councilor at his Jesuit school. A shy boy becoming aware of his homosexual tendencies, raised in a Catholic cultural context that made desire sinful, he believed he was somehow to blame for his abuse. After all, only the innocent at heart feel guilt. Thirty years later, he tracks down the perpetrator.
Theatre as an art is uniquely well suited to realizing the paradoxical nature of life.
Bob, the perpetrator, is treated with compassion. The abuse is acknowledged as something that has allowed Moran to shine spiritually – “what harms us, might come to restore us”. It’s about the pain that makes one who one is.
The work started as a journal – as Moran puts it: “the pen unraveling the knot inside him”. This became a book and after public readings bravely emerged as a play. There is still some residual tension between the spoken and the written word. It is superbly composed and the language is beautiful, if slightly over written, something Jaqueline Dommisse’s tight direction helps elide.
On the message in the work, Moran says: “A child’s job is to fall in love and the role of the adult is to have boundaries, period!” Bob is an “unconscious shithead” says Moran off stage, who caused enormous trauma through his thoughtless transgression.
With this work, Peter Hayes is top of his game.
