A packed Tuesday night at the Old Fitz Theatre proves just how deeply Es & Flo resonates – a love story that has matured from passion into something richer, steadier, and slowly cathartic.

Es & Flo follows two women living in Cardiff, whose decades‑long love is tested when memory begins to slip and estranged family and unexpected strangers step into their sheltered life. What unfolds is a deeply human battle for safety, dignity and the right to choose.

Under Emma Canalese’s steady, unobtrusive direction, the emotional landscape feels both intimate and authentic. She guides this Australian premiere with a sensitivity that allows the truth to rise without ever tipping into sentimentality. It is a tender triumph of queer intimacy, beautifully carried by Annie Byron and Fay Du Chateau.

These women carry the past in their bodies: the private violence and trauma they endured, the shame they were taught to swallow – carried shame, self‑perceived shame, generational shame. Playwright Jennifer Lunn shows us these struggles aren’t just tied to age; they evolve across a woman’s lifetime.

Es is seventy‑one, and her relationship with Flo has settled into something deeper than initial passion – a lived‑in, fiercely protective, co‑dependent bond. Annie Byron expertly underplays the earliest tremors of Esme’s dementia in tiny fractures – a pause, a repeated phrase, a stumble – and her fear covered with jovial smiles and pleasantries: jelly babies, tea and toast.

Du Chateau delivers Flo as steady and restrained, suspended between worry and denial. This is a woman who has spent a lifetime holding herself together as their generational age gap has slowly tilted her from partner to protector. What lingers is their shared dread: the knowledge that one signature could leave them uprooted and alone – losing far more than just a house.

Es and Flo never “came out”; instead they insulated themselves from a world that, in many ways, has finally moved forward. That lingering secrecy shapes everything: how they love, how they fear, how they protect what little they have. This exposes how the very qualities women rely on – compromise, caregiving and fierce independence – can also be the forces that limit them.

This is precisely why the abrupt arrival of Beata, a Polish care worker (played with formidable force by Charlotte Salusinszky), and her young daughter Kasia, is so disruptive. Beata sees and states immediately what Es and Flo have been refusing to face. Es is no longer safe, and Flo cannot care for her alone. Love is not enough. This presence becomes the jolting catalyst that pulls them out of their dangerous slump.

Kasia, performed with a delightful, unaffected ease by Georgina Warren‑Nwokolo, is vital; children cut straight through the stories adults tell themselves, guided by a fearless innocence not yet touched by prejudice. Beata and Kasia become a curated family, formed through care, presence, and the simple courage to show up.

Eloise Snape’s turn as Es’s daughter‑in‑law Katherine becomes one of the production’s quiet revelations. She arrives on a mission to “rescue” Es and do “what’s right”, under strict instructions from her husband Peter – a man we never see, yet whose harsh presence is felt in every choice she makes.

Katherine is prickly, defensive, painfully self‑contained, worn down by dissonance and her bullying partner. It is a role that could tip into caricature, yet Snape keeps her wholly authentic. Her weary rigidity feels lived‑in. In earlier scenes she holds herself in a brittle tension, her words tightening her armour. Snape traces Katherine’s shift with delicate precision: the softening, the pauses, the flickers of self‑recognition, and the first tentative steps towards a life that might finally be her own. This emergence feels earned, deeply moving, and quietly hopeful.

Soham Apte’s set keeps everything close and recognisable – a modest Welsh home. Nondescript and worn, its overlapping shades of beige echo the narrowing world Es now inhabits. Projections flicker fragments of memory: flashes of her activist heyday – moments when she roared, her present and past blurring together. Luna Ng’s lighting supports that drift, moving the space between clarity and suspension.

What’s striking about this story is how it keeps revealing new layers, until you feel you genuinely know these women. It’s a real slice of what women deal with every day – the things we don’t always see or acknowledge until we find ourselves in that hospital room, that cramped kitchen, or standing in the moment when life turns.

Es & Flo reveals how much of women’s lives is built on adjustment, on love, and on the sacrifices that hold everything together. Extraordinary women living very ordinary lives exude their own fragile beauty. Soft yet seismic, it will make you remember what really counts. Sometimes, the quietest stories can hit with the greatest force.

Es & Flo runs until 28Feb at The Old Fitz Theatre .

For further details see: https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/es-flo

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