VIOLET ONLINE. Directed by Megan Furniss, with Lynita Crofford. At the Alexander Upstairs until October 18. STEYN DU TOIT reviews.
“I LEFT my husband soon after I turned 50,” Lynita Crofford’s anonymous protagonist tells us while blogging on her iPad. “We had grown apart,” she goes on to say before perceptively summing up the 18 years they had spent together.
“It had been six years of a ‘oh-shit-I-have-a-headache-and-the-kids-are-outside-the-door’ marriage, three years of bland sitting in front of the TV marriage, two blocked out years, and a couple with one-of-us-in-huge-crisis marriage. And then my husband moved out.”
Left alone in a house with no money, three teens, four dogs, a housekeeper with OCD, a gardener with HIV and “a tingling between my thighs that needed filling,” she then begins an online journal chronicling her uncoordinated foray into internet dating, cybersex, Brazilian waxing and whiskey appreciation.
Directed by Megan Furniss and compiled from a real-life News24 blog by the same name, this humorous one-hander pulls no punches in relating Violet’s attempts to survive as a middle-aged divorcee with a distaste for bad spelling.
Divided into 14 chapters and taking place against an entirely purple set design, it is a production that will not only have you chuckling at her self-awareness and great sense of humour, but also one where you’ll grow to regard Violet as a close friend by the end of it.
While a narrative centered around writing about singledom, bedroom shenanigans and dating is not a new concept thanks to TV shows such as Sex and the City, what makes this different, apart from its local setting, is its “imperfect” narrator. In a world where talking about sex and the pursuit of it is encouraged as long as you are in your 20’s, sexually attractive by society’s standards and wearing Jimmy Choos, it is refreshing to see an older character who is just as insecure as the rest of us when it comes to these matters.
As a concept, Violet Online has the potential to be adapted for various platforms. Apart from turning it into a longstanding theatre franchise, updated as often as the author releases new blog posts, I can easily see portions of it being performed as part of a stand-up comedy routine too, or even fleshed out into a television sitcom, YouTube series or radio drama.
Thanks to Violet’s delightful way with words, no topic is taboo, too awkward or inarticulate. Whether it’s an online game of “titillating Scrabble” in between school runs, breaking out in blisters just before a hook-up as a result of an allergic reaction to her partner massaging her with Persian oil, or disastrous sexting with a guy in India named Apoorva, she recounts each adventurous mishap with such wit that it only becomes funnier in the mind’s eye.
Following her acclaimed portrayal of British welfare campaigner Emily Hobhouse in An Audience with Miss Hobhouse, Violet Online presents a completely different acting challenge for Crofford. Not only does she succeed, but thanks to Furniss, manages to find every rhythm and comedic beat in the sharp scriptwriting.
Lying draped over a sofa, sitting by her little purple table or listening to a pop songs separating each chapter – along with motivational meme posters and cartoons drawn by designer Goregoat (goregoat.tumblr.com) – she convincingly plays a woman who has rebuffed the onslaughts of life with a humorous shield.
At the preview there were rarely a moment in the 55-minute run where Crofford, who discovered during rehearsals that she personally knew the author of the blog, didn’t have the majority of the audience laughing at any given moment.
l Tickets are R80 to R90. To book, see call 021 300 1652.