PICTURE THE SCENARIO. It’s the birthday of Maureen (Shaelin Tobin). She’s turning a grimly large number. Her hip is playing up, and in the wake of the loss of her beloved husband Peter, she’s moved in with her older sister, Vera (Camilla Waldman). It’s a bottom-of-the-line end-of-the-road retirement village and Maureen’s feeling blue. All she has is her footed Victorian-style bathtub and her iPad to reflect on what has been in her otherwise happy life. But then, there’s Vera. And her episodes. She’s nine years older than Maureen. And they have a bathroom door, which, if shut, can’t be opened again from the inside. Ladies of Lavare is their delicious, whimsically, heart-breaking and pants-wettingly funny tale. It’s at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 17 October 2026.
Blending the horror of ageing with the inner mirth of madness, the work in many ways evokes plays of the ilk of Andrew Buckland and Toni Morkel in Tobacco, and the Harmful Effects Thereof. It also evokes films of the ilk of The Leisure Seeker and Poms where the idea of ageing is reflected with the sheen of no longer caring what others may think, including your children with their own lives.
But Ladies of Lavare mixes all these values with the kind of fantasies that made childhood with a sibling that much more hilarious, terrifying, real and memorable. When two bottles of shower gel can manifest as binoculars, and adult diapers become life jackets, not to mention a loofa substituting as a gear lever, you embrace the blurring of hard-edged reality, not as a young outsider looking at the instability of old people, but as a human being, whose life is as rich with memories and idiosyncrasies as that of both Vera and Maureen.
Do you remember being peed on in the bath by an older sibling? Being told there was a lion in the darker reaches of the garden? Being led to believe that fairies lived under the trapdoor in the utility corridor of the property? Did you rename the interstices of your back yard into real street names in the city centre, and navigate them in your tricycle or were you of the belief there was a bogeyman under your bed, but not under your sister’s? This is a tale rich with the smell of elderly crocheted hanger covers, bits and bobs of decades old memories and the cloy of biscuit tins with crumbs and a bit of rust in the seams. It’s about embracing ageing without the constraints of vanity that society teaches us, and it is about letting go and laughing from the very bottom of your belly.
But oft, those laughs turn into tears, when the focus touches the nerve, as it must, of being elderly and feeling neglected because of not enough family visits. Of having to keep busy to force your thoughts from the abyss. Of being numbingly lonely in a world made increasingly hostile by the presence of technology, other old people and fingers and hips and bladder muscles which don’t always obey. And while some of the quips and complaints uttered by the sisters are overused, the thrust of the play remains fresh and pithy.
The lighting design of this work, from the play of shadow to the articulation of the door behind the shower curtain, works in beautiful tandem with the set, cluttered as it is with the mementoes of memory and the necessities of age. You can almost smell the mildew finding its spores in everything, from the bath chair to the walker, the stacks of family pics to the boxes of as yet unhoused things.
There is a cliched sweetness to this play which does detract a tad from the bigger issues. And the play is too long by about 10 minutes, but it will rest with you in both comfortable and uncomfortable ways. And every so often, after watching it, you may still find yourself bursting into inappropriate guffaws as you re-remember some of its lines.
Ladies of Lavare is written Tammany Rose-Barton, performed by Shaeleen Tobin and Camilla Waldman and directed by Juliette Jenner. It is produced by Daphne Kuhn and Tammany Rose-Barton, stage managed by Regina Dube, with technical management by Loftus Mohale assisted by Reggie Mathebe, technical assistance by Nhlanhla Zungu, production assistance by Za Mwubela and theatre assistance by Magdalene Grace and Patricia Ramotatha. Featuring design by Oliver Hauser (production and lighting); Lauren Wilensky (set design and costumes), Nathan Ro (soundscape), it is assisted by Evanca Moolman (production management assistance) and Mika Stefano (online). It is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 17 October 2026.