Nagging Doubt

Marking the centenary of the Union of South Africa and the 50th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, Jack Klaff presents his one-man show, Nagging Doubt at the Finborough Theatre for six performances only.

Drawing on Klaff’s own childhood memories, Nagging Doubt takes us back to a watershed moment in history, exactly half a century ago. On 21st March 1960, outside Sharpeville police station, 35 miles from Johannesburg, panicked police officers fired at peaceful black demonstrators, killing seventy people and wounding two hundred more, including women and children. Following that atrocity, apartheid South Africa teetered on the verge of a racial bloodbath.

“My son said, ‘Daddy, what was Sharpeville?’ I’m happy that life is going on now, but straight away I told him the story.” – Ernest Ndlovu, activist and teacher

Using mercurial changes of character and minimal set and costumes, Jack Klaff evokes twenty characters caught up in the tumultuous events before and after the Massacre. He portrays the fictional family of liberal journalist Eric Lovell and his wife Marjorie (based on Klaff’s uncle and aunt), also South African Prime Minister Verwoerd, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Albert Luthuli, Robert Sobukwe, an Afrikaaner policeman and even Nelson Mandela himself.

Nagging Doubt was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1981 and has been presented in Italy, France, the Netherlands and the United States as well as throughout the UK. It was presented in the very first season at the Almeida Theatre and also at the Donmar Warehouse under the auspices of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the show was last seen on stage at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre in 1984. A version for Channel Four, directed by Roger Graef, received international acclaim.

Nagging Doubt runs concurrently with the European Premiere of Craig Higginson’s Dream of The Dog, starring Janet Suzman. Together the plays portray the old and new South Africa.