| What: I Can Buy Myself Flowers by Mike van Graan When: July 17-19, 2025 Where: Masque, Cape Town Performer: Erika Breytenbach Direction and set: Toni Morkel Sound scape and design: Lize-Marie Wait and Jessie Diepeveen Tickets: Available through the Masque Theatre website and Quicket |
Erika Breytenbach delivers an impassioned performance in Mike van Graanโs inspirational comedic play, I Can Buy Myself Flowers. The title of the play references the Miley Cyrusโ song of the same name which has become a refrain of affirmation for single women. Breytenbach channels Natalie, a 50-something woman who regales the audience with her story.
The perfect life Natalie thought she had implodes when her husband leaves her, with a three month old baby, to seek his true self. Finding herself jobless, she pivots into a career as real estate agent and embarks on a journey of buying her own flowers and not relying on a man. She is not alone. Support, solace and fun is dished up by a sisterhood of quirky women singletons: โOld enough to be on their second or third marriages, young enough not to be blamed for apartheid and women enough for menopause, Natalie and her five friends adopt Six-in-the- City as the name for their WhatsApp group.โ There is also a female caregiver and a sex therapist. Breytenbach has a terrific stage presence and vividly conjures up the characters โ accents and idiosyncrasies.
I will not narrative spoil. As the stories spool out and we are pulled along as all is revealed. Through the excavation of her story, Natalie reaches a space of healing and understanding for her ex-husband. She acknowledges his choice to live an authentic life which by inference facilitated her sense of agency in buying flowers for herself โ physically and emotionally โ by relying on herself.
Mike van Graanโs text deftly charts Natalieโs peregrination from flummoxed, enraged young mum to older woman in a good space. Palimpsests of Apartheid linger in some of the relationships which Natalie acknowledges and which makes this play more than just a coming-of-age older woman play.
Spirited direction by Toni Morkel and striking soundscape and design by Lize-Marie Wait and Jessie Diepeveen, I Can Buy Myself Flowers is upbeat, funny and wise, with an endearing protagonist and her sisterhood, poignantly evoked by Breytenbach. It is a a bitter-sweet, wise and charming play. The audience tonight at the Masque in Cape Town was packed with 50 something silver haired women. I heard one woman quip that I Can Buy Myself Flowers โis cheaper than therapy.โ This run at the Masque is three nights only, so this is a quickie review. Tonight, Thursday July 17 was the first show. There are shows tomorrow, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 at 7.30pm. The play premiered in February (2025) at the Drama Factory and has travelled extensively, with over 30 performances. It was recently on at the National Arts Festival.
โ Erika Breytenbach in I Can Buy Myself Flowers by Mike van Graan, directed by Toni Morkel. Pic: Jeremeo le Cordeur. Supplied.
