This striking new play takes on a huge and well traversed subject – the trials and tribulations of motherhood – and finds many, occasionally too many, fresh angles for commentary on it.
The production is built up across a mosaic of scenes as ‘M’ seeks to write a play, and sustain relationships and friendships alongside caring for a growing family, including a baby that is very unwell. The staging is slickly minimalist, just a few pieces of furniture repurposed, and a number of key props hidden away in the floor. This makes for easy transitions and the four actors ensure that things move along seamlessly.
This summary to date makes the whole play sound deadly serious, but that would be very misleading. While the themes could not be more weighty, Jane Upton’s writing has a wonderful, free-wheeling lightness of touch, wit, and wry self-mockery that reminds you at times of Victoria Wood. It is also very fair-minded, so that while there are plenty of quarrels and disputes, both sides of an argument get an airing, which makes for a highly energised encounters, whether between M and her husband and mother, or with health and literary professionals. When you also factor in a superbly talented and flexible cast, you have a result that is both continuously thought-provoking and dramtically incisive in the moment.
My only reservation lies with the structure, or at least the deliberate lack of a traditional one. At one self-referential point, M suggests that the play she is writing about a woman and mother deliberately has adopted the peaks and troughs of the menstrual cycle to make its point. However, the result does at times seem too episodic – some scenes finish before their natural energy has played itself out, whereas others outstay their welcome or repeat issues already memorably aired previously. At 90 minutes it is perhaps 10 minutes too long.
That said, the performances are outstanding. Lizzy Watts, in the huge central role, just about encompasses every mood from elation to despair and back. She conveys the frustrations of continual tiredness and corner-cutting to cope; the loss of professional opportunities as her contemporaries move ahead of her; the intended or accidental disdain of friends, neighbours and professionals who patronise her without understanding the pressures under which she operates. But there is cheeerful determination and a sense of fun and self-deprecation as well that make this a fully rounded characterisation of rare detail and penetration.
The other three actors play a multipicity of roles, all well distinguished from one another in accent or mannerism or body language. André Squire is a very plausible modern husband, caring and empathetic up to a point, but also frustrated and uncomprehending especially around M’s lack of desire for sex on terms that suit him. Josh Goulding has a range of fairly creepy and unappealing parts to play, but he gives them convincing depth, especially as an embittered ex-boyfriend and a cutely condescending publisher. Most impressive of all is Jamie-Rose Monk who covers a midwife, a cynical, hard-bitten literary agent, M’s mother, and various friends of varying degrees of empathy. She really does make you feel that the cast list is longer than it is so different are these portrayals..
While sometimes there is too much going on and too many emotional or technical registers in play, this production is undoubtedly a major achievement for all concerned and fully deserved the standing ovation it received on press night.
Writer: Jane Upton
Director: Angharad Jones
Cast: Josh Goulding, Jamie-Rose Monk, André Squire, Lizzy Watts
Until 25 October 2025
90 mins, no interval
Photo Credit: Charlie Flint