Es and Flo dance in the kitchen, their knees tucked tightly together, their hands clasped around each other’s backs. They snog passionately and the audience cheer. To see this soft, sexy moment between these two older women feels remarkably rare and somehow affirming; look, this play says, this is the joy you can have. This is what commitment can look like.
Jennifer Lunn’s play knocks at the door of Liz Crowther’s spritely Es and Doreene Blackstock’s protective Flo. The pair have stood side by side for 40 years, from the community chaos of Greenham Common to the happy haven of the home they’ve shared and shaped together (delicately designed by Libby Watson). But as Es starts showing symptoms of dementia, everything they’ve built together begins to unravel. Having hidden their relationship from her family and never officially married, everything is in Es’s name; Flo could be swept aside with no control over her partner’s future care.
Deceptively sweet, this domestic drama hits all the hideous beats of a typical tale of dementia. As Flo struggles to accept help, it is strikingly clear that there is no right answer or easy option – and this is without money even being an issue. Under Susie McKenna’s direction, the performances ache with how hard it can be to see your loved one slip away, and how difficult it can be to want, more than anything, not to be a burden. And yet the characters are so charming and funny, and their dedication to each other so complete, that joy and affection seep through at every turn.
Rose-tinting comes into play with the unfailing generosity of care worker Beata (Adrianna Pavlovska), paid for by Es’s absent son and his cold but thawing wife Catherine (Michelle McTernan); few shift-working care workers have the time to stay late for pizza or sit by a hospital bed overnight. But Beata’s warmth oozes over the story, as she and her considerate daughter Kasia (played tonight by Chioma Nduka, the role split with Renée Hart) become part of Es and Flo’s found family.
The ending may be overly neat, but who cares when it means the brutal loneliness of dementia can be lightened just a little? With heart and soul, Es & Flo is a tender portrait of a woman caring for her love, in sickness and in health.
At Kiln theatre until 24 June
