Jennifer Lunn’s Es & Flo to make premiere at Wales Millennium Centre in April

Jennifer Lunn’s award-winning play Es & Flo is to finally make its premiere this spring.

The piece, originally due to premiere in 2020 before the pandemic, will run at Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff between 28 April – 13 May 2023.

Telling the fierce love of an older, interracial lesbian relationship and women coming together to fight for what’s right, Es & Flo won the 2020 Popcorn Writing Award and the 2022 Nancy Dean Lesbian Playwriting Award.

Es and Flo fell fiercely in love in the 80s. They’ve been secretly living as lovers ever since. As Es becomes more forgetful around their home, an unexpected carer arrives.

Who sent this woman? Why? Can they trust her?

As the outside world comes crashing in, Flo fights to protect the life they’ve built together over forty years behind closed doors. And faces the hardest battle of her life – to hold on to the woman she loves.

Leading the cast of five intergenerational female characters, who range in age from eight to 71, are Doreene Blackstock (Netflix’s Sex Education, Sky’s The Colour Room) and Liz Crowther (National Theatre’s Animal Farm).

Joining them are Michelle McTernan and Adrianna Pavlovska, with the youngest role of Kasia shared between two young actors from Cardiff, Reesie Dupe and Mirella Siciliano. The play is directed by Susie McKenna who leads an all-female creative team.

Writer Jennifer Lunn said: “My Grandmother lived with dementia for many years. As a family, we had to navigate the long, complex, unpredictable journey, constantly adjusting our own roles within it whilst holding on to our relationships with her – relationships which were still full of joy, humour, and love. I really wanted to honour the reality of the experience of people living with dementia and their family carers and to celebrate the incredible love and care at the heart of these lives.

“Es & Flo is a story about secrets and family and the strength of women coming together – but above all it’s a story about love – which was the biggest gift my Grandmother gave me. She was an amazing woman and is absolutely in the DNA of this play, right down to her love of Jelly Babies and Jammie Dodgers. I hope it does her proud.”

For more information and tickets, visit wmc.org.uk