Waiting for someone to collect her sewing machine, an old woman takes her leave of this last remaining companion. As she reminisces, she tells the story of her life to a world almost entirely gone. She is nostalgic about loose-leaf tea and homemade clothes. And even though she talks about small domestic matters, there is a bigger narrative that eventually becomes clear. This is a story about white South African farmers who lived through and benefitted from the Apartheid, but who now find themselves in a country drastically different from the one they used to know. The old woman talks about the need to keep one's room tidy, quoting her mother who used to say that if you're taken ill someone might come in and see the mess. ‘Nowadays,’ she adds, ‘your room has to be spotless so that you know where the panic button is, and they know where to find the jewellery. Like McDonald's drive through’.
Sandra Prinsloo plays the 80-year-old Magdaleen with precision and graceful confidence. This is some of the finest acting you'll find at the Fringe and this unassuming little play would fall flat without this solid actress performing in it.
The script by Rachelle Greeff - translated by director Hennie van Greunen - gives perhaps too little background for European audiences, although the style and structure of it means it slowly reveals its meaning like a flower opening its petals. While this is a tale set in a very specific political context, it is also a very human story about someone who has outlived her contemporaries and has to face the end alone. It is beautiful and heartbreaking, but not entirely without hope.
