Abnormal Load.

Abnormal Load, the longest of the playlets in Travelling Shots, enjoyed a life beyond the run of that piece and James Borthwick as Gregory de Wit continued to perform the piece to huge acclaim for a number of years at festivals around South Africa.

“In Abnormal Load, the remarkable penultimate sketch in Travelling Shots, James Borthwick plays a salesman facing unemployment, his being threatened by sanctions, his virility destroyed by a wife who has left him, and his self-respect eroded by a drinking companion (unseen) who is trying to leave. This is beautifully written; Slabolepszy at his best: aggression and pathos, and the overriding image of an ultimately soft-centred man who has little more than fear to offer and to take refuge in. Script and actor complement each other beautifully and it is a superb sketch…”

– John Campbell (THE FINANCIAL MAIL)

 “Abnormal Load makes the entire evening worth the trip… a masterful performance by James Borthwick… national paranoia and sense of imminent disaster are brilliantly embodied in the pub encounter between a salesman and an invisible companion…”

– Andrea Vinassa  (THE STAR ‘Tonight!’)