FringeTheatre

Mary Brennan THE moments when you laugh, and the moments when the laughter ebbs away, may well depend on what age you are now – and whether you have relatives living in a care home.

London theatre group Inspector Sands have always had the knack of hitting an audience’s funny bone, then touching on a sore spot.

The Lounge, performed by Lucinka Eisler, Giulia Innocenti and Ben Lewis and written by them with director Lu Kemp, is shrewdly ridiculous but with an undertow of Awful Warnings: getting old is no joke.

Marsha (Lucinka Eisler) was, at 97, maintaining her cherished independence. Living happily alone, eating when, and what, she wanted, watching television only when something intellectually stimulating was on. A fall ended all that.

Now Marsha is coo-ed at, and chivvied, by care assistants who don’t bother with proper names, but “darling” everyone.

There are droll episodes where Marsha clashes with other residents, droll – but then less amusing – encounters between the visiting Mark and the care home manageress who is more interested in giving him the hard sell – even though he’s only 39 – than in discovering where his missing grandfather is.

It explodes into farce, when Marsha implodes.

She checks out, permanently, but in a quick scene change it’s business as usual.

However, watching all three performers morph, superbly, into codger-dom before us does rather whisper “is it later than you think, Fringe-goer?” Run ends today