"A joy to watch."
— Steve Kretzmann, The Critter
The Finkelsteins Are Coming to Dinner is a tragicomic love story about two men, a mother and her son, and the painful struggle to say goodbye to the people we love.
Two years after his mother's death, Nate Kahn is still living with her.
Sylvia cooks in Nate’s kitchen, critiques his taste in men, curates his art exhibitions and runs the household from a sofa she’s no longer technically alive to occupy. Only Nate can see or hear her.
Then James arrives.
A young artist’s model and poet with little discretion and an allergy to clothing, James crashes into Nate’s carefully ordered life - and onto his canvas - with outrageous poems about cocks, Walt Whitman quotations and an openness that Nate cannot resist. When the two men fall in love, Sylvia declares war. She is convinced James is reckless, dangerous and destined to abandon him. James, meanwhile, cannot understand why Nate remains emotionally imprisoned by a mother who died two years ago.
As the struggle for Nate’s loyalty intensifies, his grip on reality begins to slip. Sylvia invites long-dead friends for Friday night dinner, Nate desperately tries to keep both the living and the dead happy, and James is forced to compete with a woman he cannot see. What begins as a comic clash between an overbearing Jewish mother and her son’s boyfriend becomes a painful struggle to let go of the dead.
On the night of Nate’s first exhibition, with Sylvia insisting the entire dead Finkelstein family is about to arrive for dinner, Nate must finally choose between the rituals and grief that have bound him to his mother and the future James offers him.
The Finkelsteins Are Coming to Dinner premiered at the Cape Town Fringe Festival before transferring to the Alexander Bar & Theatre in Cape Town.
Read about the original production and watch highlights from the show →Grief is often portrayed as something that fades with time. The Finkelsteins Are Coming to Dinner begins with a different assumption: that the dead continue to accompany us long after they are gone.
Drawing on humour, tenderness and emotional honesty, the play explores what happens when love itself becomes an obstacle to healing. Nate's relationship with his mother is neither tragic nor sentimental but familiar, complicated and very human.
A young gay Jewish artist preparing for his first major exhibition. Intelligent, sensitive and deeply affected by the loss of his parents, Nate remains inextricably connected to the life he shared with his mother. When James enters his life as a model and lover, Nate is forced to confront what it would mean to live without her.
Nate's late mother.
Protective, opinionated, funny and fiercely loving, Sylvia remains a constant presence in her son's life. Determined to keep him safe, she struggles to accept the changes that threaten the world they share.
Funny, sexy, chaotic and emotionally generous, James approaches life with enthusiasm and curiosity. His growing relationship with Nate brings laughter, desire and disruption, challenging the limits of Nate's carefully contained world.
Since its production in Cape Town, the play has undergone substantial revision. While the heart of the story remains unchanged, new scenes have been added and Sylvia’s role significantly expanded, deepening and complicating the relationship between mother and son.
These revisions were undertaken with the support of Matthew Kalil, screenwriter, story consultant and author of The Three Wells of Screenwriting.
