Tag Archives: Maud Dromgoole

Mary’s Babies

Mary’s Babies
★★★

Jermyn Street Theatre

Mary’s Babies

Mary’s Babies

Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed – 22nd March 2019

★★★

 

“a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions”

 

In the 1930s, Dr Mary Barton and her husband, Dr Bertold Wiesner, founded one of the first clinics to treat infertility with donor insemination. Because the practice was new, there were no regulations regarding donor selection. Barton said she had a small pool of select donors, but thanks to DNA testing, we now know the majority of the 1,500 women who were treated by Barton were inseminated with Wiesner’s sperm.

Written by Maud Dromgoole and directed by Tatty Hennessy, Mary’s Babies imagines various intersecting lives of a handful of people who discover they share Wiesner’s DNA. There’s considerable skill in Dromgoole’s windows into lives that are rich, genuine, and occasionally touching. However, despite the creative team’s best efforts to maintain clarity, with just two actors multi-roling so many different characters with such abrupt alternation, a lot is lost in the shuffle.

Katy Stephens and Emma Fielding take on a total of thirty-nine different characters, although the play primarily revolves around five. Stephens and Fielding are strong performers (they admirably handled a technical difficulty which stopped the show midway), and Stephens in particular impresses with her vivid transformations. An ingenious set design (Anna Reid) that displays the names of the characters on a wall, which light up according to who is in each scene, is indispensable.

But even with first-rate multi-roling and displayed character names, the play can be difficult to follow. Hennessy’s choice of minimalism for an informationally dense piece, and Dromgoole’s choppy, short scenes with vague dialogue, leave large gaps for meaning to fall through. Entire scenes often hinge on one word that is too easily lost. I missed the word ‘eulogy’ in the opening monologue, so didn’t get why Stephens was reading off a script, thinking it couldn’t be possible she didn’t have the lines memorised. I missed the word ‘polydactyl’ in another scene, and was perplexed by the fuss about Stephens’ hand.

Additionally, the characters’ ages don’t transmit well. A reveal toward the end that two characters are twins doesn’t click; I spent the performance believing one was about ten years younger than the other. All of them, who are dating and planning/having children, seem to be in their thirties. Kieran, arguably the main character, comes off as early twenties. They jar with the maths, which says their age range is forty to eighty (the play takes place in 2007 and the clinic closed in 1967). It’s evident Dromgoole wanted to write younger characters. The play may have been stronger if it were set in the present, about a fictional artificial insemination scandal in the 1980s.

This is a hugely ambitious play that doesn’t quite succeed in its intentions. Too much visual and verbal information fails to communicate. The script seems better suited to film, which would solve a lot of its problems.

 

Reviewed by Addison Waite

Photography by Robert Workman

 


Mary’s Babies

Jermyn Street Theatre until 13th April

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Mad as Hell | ★★★ | February 2018
The Dog Beneath the Skin | ★★★ | March 2018
Tonight at 8.30 | ★★★★★ | April 2018
Tomorrow at Noon | ★★★★ | May 2018
Stitchers | ★★★½ | June 2018
The Play About my Dad | ★★★★ | June 2018
Hymn to Love | ★★★ | July 2018
Burke & Hare | ★★★★ | November 2018
Original Death Rabbit | ★★★★★ | January 2019
Agnes Colander: An Attempt At Life | ★★★★ | February 2019

 

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Blue Moon – 3 Stars

Moon

Blue Moon

Bread & Roses Theatre

Reviewed – 10th January 2018

★★★

“just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, the dialogue pitches some sleight of hand that makes you think again”

 

I remember, as a child, being taught the basics of Poker by my elder brother. “It’s all about keeping your opponent guessing” he explained, “oh, and the bluff…”

There is something attractive about having to second-guess, about not quite knowing what’s going on. Maud Dromgoole’s slick two-hander deals this in spades; just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, the dialogue pitches some sleight of hand that makes you think again.

Twenty-one year old Matthew (Owen Frost) is sitting at a pub table waiting for Suzie (Victoria Porter) a slightly older, seemingly more worldly woman. Is it a first date? Is it a blind date? Is she an escort? After the initial teasing few minutes it transpires that Suzie has been asked to teach Matthew the rudiments of poker. The set, as such, is practically a replica of the pub downstairs below the theatre space, and the audience are invited to sit at various tables. A simple yet effective design, in keeping with ‘Threadbare Theatre’s’ aesthetic that focuses on the storytelling and the acting.

Meanwhile the world outside is succumbing to a lupine apocalypse, with the distant howl of wolves resembling air raid sirens. An allegorical yet slightly confusing sub plot, though interestingly it does add a certain tension.

But the focus is on the players. Director Lucy Linger has picked a couple of intuitive and quick-witted actors who bounce off each other throughout the seventy-minute poker game. She teaches, he studies, she attacks, he defends, they drink, he bids, she raises, he quits, they talk. Two very natural performances. Increasingly they lay their cards on the table, both literally and figuratively, and the more they learn about each other, the higher the stakes. Each scene demands a higher wager than the preceding one.

Shuffled together by Dromgoole’s insightful writing, it is in parts a comedy, a horror story, a political satire and a love story. But above all it seems to be about stripping away the bluff. When the characters realise that they have no option but to show their hand to each other, the game reaches its final climax. To find out what that is, you’ll have to take the gamble and go along for yourself.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

 


Blue Moon

Bread & Roses Theatre until 13th January

 

 

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