“Triple Axel” is Like Figure Skating: Graceful and Difficult

✍🏽 By: Kaulana Williams | 📷 Photos: Jeremeo Le Cordeur

“Triple Axel” made its debut at the Toyota US Woordfees 2020. It is the latest offering from Fleur du Cap Award-winning young playwright and director Nico Scheepers; who also designed the innovative set and lighting for this production. It features David Viviers as George and Carlo Daniels as Adam.

“Triple Axel” gets its name from a figure skating maneuver that looks delicate and graceful, but is extremely technically difficult to perform. George (played by Viviers) is a young white middle-class man who is about to travel to Canada to pursue greener pastures, but whose plans are derailed when he meets Adam (played by Daniels). Fleeing the loud music of the gay nightclub he’s partying at, George finds Adam standing outside on the pavement, casually eating a shawarma and minding his own business. He awkwardly tries to pick-up Adam, but nervously has verbal diarrhea instead. Adam, stands silently eating his shawarma, seemingly in stunned disbelief at George’s oversharing; but, when George finally stops talking, Adam surprisingly asks him for a kiss.

They go back to Adam’s flat which is represented by the most magnificent light installation suspended above a mattress on the floor. The installation looks like a bedframe suspended upside down from the ceiling that is covered with large lightbulbs. Adam describes it as a sunbed, designed to replicate the brightness of the sun. It is indeed very bright. It is ‘the morning after’ and the two men playfully get to know each other over a coffee and we learn that George is due to leave for Canada the very next day. Undeterred, Adam decides to spend the day with George, who is clearly falling for him. However, Adam’s feelings for George are more opaque.

We then see a montage of scenes that represent video phone calls between the two spanning several months. Adam seems very interested in George despite the distance and the fact that they only ever spent one day together. They decide through their online relationship to officially commit to one another and become boyfriends. George returns to South Africa, but this appears to be just a visit, as the two are soon back to video phone conversations. Despite their time in Adam’s intimate flat together, George and Adam struggle to be physically intimate with one another, with George seeming to have the most difficulty. Adam’s feelings about this are once again pretty opaque. While George bubbles over and overshares his every thought and feeling in a sometimes overwhelming torrent, Adam is always measured and his feelings and intentions are never entirely clear. Whether George knows this and pretends to ignore it, or whether he doesn’t even notice how guarded Adam is past his own effervescent feelings is not clear either.

Their relationship starts to take the strain when George returns for the second time and they cohabitate in Adam’s flat. After dating for months, Adam anticipates that their relationship has at this stage evolved to be quite intimate, but George still seems to be scared to commit to Adam in certain ways. This could be because of George’s lack of experience with romantic relationships, but it is also suggested that he is struggling to deal with his mother’s terminal illness and their strained relationship. After coming out to his mother as gay, at George’s insistence, Adam is frustrated by George’s stubborn refusal to come out to his own mother. He overhears George on the phone with his mother talking about ‘his girlfriend’ and referring to Adam by a made-up woman’s name. While Adam’s feelings are typically opaque; he clearly doesn’t appreciate this. George tells Adam to accept the status quo and let his mother live out her final days in peace, but Adam sees how tortured George is by hiding his homosexual identity and relationship from his conservative and judgmental mother.

Adam waits until George is absorbed in his favorite figure skating videos and calls George’s mother to tell her about him and their relationship. In shock, the mother hangs up the phone. George discovers what Adam has done when his mother phones him back. This betrayal and disrespect of his wish infuriates George who packs his things and leaves. Desperate, Adam slaps George to try to get through to him, but George has totally given up on him and their relationship. For the first time, we see Adam's feelings; he is heartbroken, devastated, confused, and remorseful; but he is also without options. He has crossed a line with George that cannot be uncrossed.

Much like the triple axel, George and Adam tried something technically complicated in launching into a long-distance relationship; being from different cultural groups, with vastly differing personalities and means of communicating. They kept trying to stick the landing, but never really pulled their triple axel off. Adam’s attempt to tell George’s mother about their relationship can also be seen as a failed over-complicated technical feat. David Viviers and Carlo Daniels pull off edge-of-your-seat performances and Nico Scheepers lands a beautiful piece of theatre, both in terms of story and design.