A One-Act Comedy
The Thing
With the Wire
A taxi rank. A tourist. A policeman. And a small thing with a wire. One Tuesday in Orange Grove, Johannesburg, everything that can go wrong does — gloriously.
A taxi rank. A tourist. A policeman. And a small thing with a wire. One Tuesday in Orange Grove, Johannesburg, everything that can go wrong does — gloriously.
A warm, fast, affectionately observed farce of mistaken names, small ambitions, and a taxi that chooses the worst possible moment to die.
Sipho Hlongwane drives the finest minibus taxi in Orange Grove — Mama Thandi, fourteen seats, sound system from Durban, seven years and never once broken down. Today she breaks down. The culprit: a small engine part, trailing a bit of wire, removed by a lovelorn traffic constable who was only trying to impress a receptionist and now cannot put it back.
Into this wanders Wydoncha Doomey, a journalist from the Chicago Tribune, here to write a piece called "Love in the Rainbow Nation." She introduces herself to everyone she meets — the driver, the policeman, the tow-truck poet, eventually the Minister of Finance — with the same bright, outstretched hand and the same two words. Nobody has the heart to tell her what they hear.
From a Tuesday kerbside to a Saturday welcome-home party for entirely the wrong Barack, the whole of Orange Grove collides: a Chairlady with two life's ambitions, a tow-truck driver who writes poetry in secret, a security guard courting his own girlfriend under a false name, and a traffic cop who is magnificent for exactly one second. It is a comedy about being seen, and heard, and finally — just about — understood.
Outside the doctor's rooms. Sipho's taxi is parked at the kerb. Wydoncha, newly arrived from Chicago, has just been told the doctor she flew eight thousand miles to interview is "on a date."
An extract — the full one-act is available to read and perform
The Thing With the Wire is available to read and to license for performance. Theatre groups, drama festivals, schools and producers are warmly invited to get in touch — Spencer replies personally to every enquiry, and is glad to talk the play through with directors.
Enquire about licensing
Born in Rhodesia and shaped by thirty-three years in South Africa, Spencer Rowley has been a soldier, a policeman, an IT consultant, an artist and a musician. His stage work ranges from the award-winning Waiting for John to this affectionate Johannesburg comedy; his novel Sawubona and the forthcoming Franki draw on the same close attention to ordinary lives. He now lives in Nottingham, England.