The play is about a black man and a white woman who meet at the beach and end up making love. A case of rape is declared, and the man is sentenced to death. Such, in a nutshell; is the preamble to the new stage adaptation of Lewis Nkosi’s 1986 novel, Mating Birds, winner of the internationally prestigious Macmillan Pen Prize.

Maake Ka-Ncube (known to thousands for his leading TV roles in Generations and Scandal, and a string of international stage productions, including The Lion King, Woza Albert, Titus Andronicus, Othello, and many others) plays Ndi Sibiya, who tells his story from prison through engagement with a clinical psychologist, Dr Dufre, played by Durban’s widely-acclaimed Themi Venturas.

The piece is set during apartheid in South Africa. It plays out in a series of flashbacks, evoked in dream sequences, as its protagonist, the unjustly accused Ndi, prepares to meet his fate on death row.