A touching song to sweet sorority.
The simple gesture of a hand raised in friendship to a stranger is pivotal to this touching play about finding new sisters where real ones are not around.
Two women who are neighbours in a block of seaside flats in Cape Town find each other after one suffers a break- in to her flat. Rosa (Robyn Scott) is an elderly Jewish widow involved in a community organisation she refers to as the Union. Stella (Ntombi Makhutshi) is a wary Nigerian immigrant living alone while her husband is away on ‘import-export’ business. These apparent diametric opposites form an unlikely alliance as they discover the common ground of having no family close by, what they’ve learned about men and life and that indescribable openness to life and its possibilities, great or small.
Hirpling, beige and bandaged, with her high pitched, almost whining voice, Rosa is already a visual clash to the bright and beautiful Stella with her colourful clothes and rich Lagos tongue. Her solitary ordered life at odds with the cupboard – like existence of her young neighbour, a victim of Rachman-like living conditions. Scott’s comic yet utterly sensitive caricature of an old woman that goes from no nonsense justice seeker to a trembling, yawning vulnerable victim of a stroke is sensitively and beautifully achieved. Scott has the most dialogue but Makhutshi plays the drug dealing, teeth hissing, younger woman who carries her own imposed health burden with perfectly pitched gestures and facial expressions to counter.
Through care and kindness, this pair of joyously wicked peeping Thomasinas goes through mutual confessionals on their road to a warm alliance. They take the audience from laughter to tears with plenty of touching wisdom in between. Knowing the best time to leave a party and how to accept the gift of receiving are pearls that pepper this captivating feast. It is salted with the sweet pain of a link to strangers when actual family is absent with lots of references to schmucks in between.
The simple set of a plain wooden table and two chairs with is enough for the two actors in the telling of this moving tale of female friendship. The play is divided in to various small scenes with only the subtlest of changes to show a change of room. The stellar acting and taut direction from Lara Bye suffice. The sound of Tracy Chapman singing the poignant lyrics of The Promise ends this endearing and beautiful love story that peals with truth.
Show Times
1 Aug - 26 Aug (except 12th), 13.50
Tickets
£15
Suitability PG