Es & Flo is a small, intimate and highly relatable and emotional story that’s finally getting its premiere at the Wales Millennium Centre. Another artistic casualty of the COVID lockdowns, Jennifer Lunn’s play was meant to take place at 2020’s Edinburgh Fringe. The play, about an ageing lesbian couple’s enduring love, has won the 2020 Popcorn Writing Award and the 2022 Nancy Dean Lesbian Playwriting Award, is playing in Cardiff before transferring to The Kiln Theatre in London.

As the Greenham Common peace camps feature heavily in the main characters’ backgrounds – Es and Flo have been in love since meeting there in the 1980s – the evening includes a pre-show performance by Bread & Roses, a female folk trio performing songs about figures from Rosa Parks to Malala Yousafzai. There’s also a short talk by some of the Welsh Greenham Women.

Forty years after that fateful first meeting, Es has started to forget things around the house. This brings a carer, Beata, and her daughter Kasia into their lives, leaving Flo trying to hold together the life they’ve built over the last 40 years. Entering the WMC’s Weston Studio, you’re greeted by a set that is lovely: as reductive as that sounds, the living room and kitchen of Es and Flo’s house looks real, and like it would be a cosy place to live. Set designer Libby Watson has designed it down to the smallest detail, including the peace symbol on the window of the back door.

The set is not the only real thing. As emotional as the play is, it’s also very intimate: you’d be forgiven for sometimes forgetting you’re in a performance space. The core performances by Doreene Blackstock and Liz Crowther are endearing, sometimes heart-rending, sometimes funny and overall believable. Theirs is a love story, a story we need more of – an older female, queer story of love.

LGBTQIA+ audience members will recognise the themes of chosen family, while some can recognise the heartbreak of a loved one with dementia. Es & Flo is a show about fierce love and feminism – and, as the character of Kasia shows, the importance of handing stories down to a younger generation.  

Es & Flo, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Tue 2 May

On until Sat 13 May. Tickets: £15. Info: here

words CHRIS WILLIAMS