THEATRE REVIEW: Please, don’t call me moffie: An intimate reflection on queer identities in Cape Town

Zubayr Charles’s Please, don’t call me moffie examines the nuanced experiences of five queer, Coloured men in Cape Town, confronting toxic masculinity while embracing the multifaceted nature of identity.

About four years ago, writer and director Zubayr Charles came across a local online personality spreading hatred about queer people on social media, using religious ideologies to justify their views.

But he noticed that this wasn’t limited to public figures. Many more people were expressing similar hateful opinions, and many of those people Charles knew personally.

This led to his conceptualising the script for what would become Please, don’t call me moffie.

Following its performances at Suidoosterfees and KKNK in 2025 and 2026, respectively, the one-man production has opened for its official theatrical run at Cape Town’s Artscape Arena.

Please, don’t call me moffie is an intimate portrait of five queer, Coloured men in their late twenties. After being shocked by a viral video of a homophobic attack in an unnamed country, they face their past and present realities in monologue-style narrations, reflecting on their identities and belonging.

What began as a seven-person cast was distilled into a one-man show through a suggestion by lead actor Anzio September.

September – seen previously in Fred Abrahamse and Marcel Meyer’s Aladdin, Marc Lottering’s Colleen the Cashier and Aunty Merle musicals, as well as Charles’s this bra’s a psycho – takes on all five figures in Please, don’t call me moffie.

Each role represents and aims to subvert a queer stereotype often seen in mainstream media: Mushfeeq the Tragic Gay, Abdullah the “Straight Man” character, Zayn the Sassy Gay, Eesa the Muscle Gay and Haroon the Repressed Gay.

Through September’s shape-shifting performance as well as the intentional use of language across English, Afrikaans and Arabic, the show presents these archetypes through an undeniably Coloured and Capetonian lens.

The transitions between characters are signalled by audio associated with each person, snippets from Britney Spears songs, static sounds and instrumentals, while September changes costumes from a clothing line hanging across the stage.

In its staging, these transformations could have been better woven into the narrative itself to create a fluidity that avoids interrupting the audience’s immersion in the world, particularly seeing as the characters are connected through the same social circle.

However, it’s September’s adept embodying of each personality – from having a jittery disposition to a poised upright posture and th