“When her crippling “gerontophobia” leaves her unable to eat raisins, a 31-year-old nurse named Jackie takes a job at a Jewish seniors’ home and discovers there’s more to aging
than getting old.
Aiding her enlightenment are a handful of opinionated golden-agers — who are so endearing and authentic you’ll forget they’re made of latex and foam.
This brilliant and unusual one-woman show from Australia’s Lana Schwarcz is so much more than Muppets wearing dentures, cute accents, and jokes about incontinence. It’s a moving, insightful, and often-hilarious look at why we’re so afraid to face the inevitable decline of our own bodies.
Schwarcz incorporates testimonials from real-life nursing-home residents, their recorded voices
adding a poignant touch.
Go ahead, drink the Geritol: Sol and Rosie will lead you gently into that good night.
5 Stars.”

“Wry, wrinkled and right on.
Grandparents rule Aussie comedy.

Before Grampa Sol and Grandma Rosie begins, an anonymous voice observes,
“She has made the play from the moments in our lives.” Apparently the production was partially put together out of interviews in a Jewish home for the aged in Melbourne.
Seems a strange place for a fizzy and funny show like this. But the central character, a nurse, is an appealing creation and the elderly have a lifetime of stories to draw on. “It’s all about memory,” says one. “Everyday is where you were 30 years ago.”
Laura Schwarcz is an Australian filmmaker, street performer, puppeteer and all around player. She’s one of those performers who immediately commands a stage and fills every second she’s on.
Her (fictional) nurse suffers from Gerontophobia, a fear of growing old — and old people. In fact, she faints when confronted by the elderly. As a remedy, she forces herself to look after the aged.
The rest of the play has to do with her growing regard for the people she looks after. “Every one of them is somebody’s mummy and daddy,” she thinks.
“How is it that a mum can look after seven children but seven children can’t look after one mum?”
Schwarcz is also a puppeteer of considerable talent. Most of her puppets are nearly life-size and like any good puppeteer she disappears into them. It doesn’t take long for you to accept the words as coming from her creations.
When she lets them go, the marionettes slump into the listless position so familiar to anyone who has spent time in a home for the aged.
She also manipulates a bank of teeth and eyes that hilariously play a game of bingo.
The nurse character is well designed for the situation she finds herself in. She’s upbeat, optimistic, and kind of klutzy — the kind of non-threatening person that would draw out the best in her charges.
We laugh WITH, and I must admit, at times, AT her old patients. Like children, old folks can hold funny perceptions and ideas. And what stories! The Polish Jew who runs away from the village back home and finds himself in Australia. The 95 -and the 98-year old who fall in love.
And it’s all filtered through this delightful, likeable young lady who falls in love with her old people. You will too.”