★★★★

“sharp and funny solo show that offers a refreshingly candid take on motherhood”

Anna Morris’s darkly comic one-woman play Son of a Bitch arrives at Southwark Playhouse following a successful run at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. With a provocative title and an intriguing premise, the show delves into themes of motherhood, societal pressure, and personal regret, balancing sharp humour with moments of introspection.

The play follows Marnie (played by Morris), a yoga instructor in her late 30s, whose life is upended when a fellow passenger records her calling her young son the C-word during a flight. The video goes viral, but rather than focusing on the fallout of this moment, the narrative primarily explores the lead-up to this event, questioning the unspoken realities of motherhood.

Morris delivers an energetic and engaging performance, effortlessly slipping into the various characters that populate Marnie’s world. From her overbearing northern mother to her intensely posh flatmate, Morris’s character work is sharply observed and often very funny. The writing brims with witty one-liners, earning consistent laughs; a line about men who look like prawns and another about depressed women in bathtubs get particularly loud chuckles. There’s a definite influence of stand-up comedy in Morris’s delivery, adding a lively rhythm to the script.

Under Madelaine Moore’s direction, the production is tightly paced and effectively staged, ensuring that the transitions between past and present feel fluid and dynamic. Visually, the production is cleverly designed. The set consists of corporate blue carpeted flooring, a white chair at its centre, and two curved “C” shape structures forming a circular shape behind it; an effective nod both to the claustrophobic setting of an aeroplane and a visual play on the word Marnie uses against her child. Lighting Design by Megan Lucas subtly shifts to reflect different moods: cold and corporate one moment, then warm and golden as Marnie parodies the ‘glow’ of motherhood. Another standout element is the use of captioning, also designed by Lucas. Displayed in a rectangular screen above the stage, the captions adapt in font and style to represent different speakers and even simulate text messages, demonstrating a well-thought-out integration of accessibility and storytelling.

The narrative structure of Son of a Bitch mirrors the spiralling nature of Marnie’s situation, moving fluidly between past and present. While this approach effectively builds intrigue, it could sometimes do with further clarity, with a multitude of names and details occasionally jumping around too loosely. Additionally, while Marnie’s husband is positioned as an unsympathetic figure – choosing to upgrade himself to business class rather than sit with his wife and child – his character feels somewhat two-dimensional, leaving questions about why these two people were together in the first place.

Beneath the humour, the play raises compelling questions about societal expectations of motherhood. A particularly striking moment comes when Marnie is asked whether she would regret not having children, only for her to subvert the question and ask what would happen instead if she regrets having one. There’s also an underexplored but poignant subplot involving a gay friend who reveals that his lack of children wasn’t a choice, but something he had to grieve. These moments hint at deeper, thought-provoking themes, though at times they feel fleeting.

While the play is consistently engaging, its pacing remains largely unchanged throughout. Moments that could have built towards greater emotional intensity or a stronger sense of escalation maintain the same rhythm, which at times lessens the dramatic impact. However, Morris’s charisma ensures the piece remains compelling. She establishes an immediate rapport with the audience, and her command of comedy ensures that the story is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.

Overall, this is a sharp and funny solo show that offers a refreshingly candid take on motherhood. While its central premise is striking, the surrounding narrative could delve deeper into its themes. Nonetheless, Morris’s performance is magnetic, making this an enjoyable and insightful performance.

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

“a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930s”

The Passenger, adapted by Nadya Menuhin from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel Der Reisende, has just opened at the Finborough Theatre. It’s a story set in Germany just after the Kristallnacht in 1938. The protagonist, a successful Jewish businessman, is attempting to find a way out of Nazi Germany. This tense, nail biting drama, directed by Tim Supple, begins like a thriller, and takes off like one of the express trains our leading man is always boarding.

The novel’s author was drawing on his own experiences of escaping Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The host of memorable characters that emerge onto the tiny stage at the Finborough Theatre have the ring of authenticity. We follow Otto Silbermann’s journey from Berlin, where he is forced to sell his apartment for pennies on the dollar to a German friend. Then he signs over his business—his life’s work—to a non-Jewish partner in order to protect it. Silbermann knows Gustav is untrustworthy and has a gambling habit, but at this late stage in Hitler’s takeover, he simply has no choice. Through a series of misadventures, and failure to obtain an exit visa, Silbermann finds himself in continual transit through Germany’s cities, already in the throes of political conflict. He meets many different characters and becomes involved in their stories, despite trying to melt anonymously into the background. His attempts to find a way out of Germany, while carrying a large sum of money in his briefcase, grow ever more desperate. Menuhin’s dramatization focuses on themes of love and betrayal in The Passenger, even if the love story in this play is a man’s bewildered struggle against fascists that are taking over the land he loves and fought for in the First World War. Silbermann is married to a Christian, considers himself thoroughly German, yet is betrayed by his country, his friends and business partners, simply because he is a Jew.

The Passenger is a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930s that we remember from films like The Third Man. Tim Supple keeps the company continually on the move around and about a simple square. This square, lined with seating, becomes train carriages, waiting rooms, and any number of spaces that Otto Silbermann encounters in his travels. As the audience, we’re right in the middle of the action as well, as the actors, dressed in period coats and hats, make speedy entrances and exits in front of us. (Set and costume design by Hannah Schmidt.) All this movement makes for a brisk beginning of the play. The atmosphere of the set design is powerfully enhanced by Joseph Alford’s sound design. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we are there in 1930s train stations. Mattis Larsen’s lighting is tightly focused on the action, giving us the sense of constant motion in a space much larger than the one we are actually seated in. The actors deserve credit for managing the precise choreography that ensures they never collide with one another, even while managing a host of complicated actions, including dressing the leading man.

Robert Neumark Jones convinces as Otto Silbermann, and he is accompanied by an equally talented ensemble on his travels. Ben Fox plays his swindling business partner Gustav with just the right amount of bluster. Eric MacLennan is an overly hearty chess playing SA man, and Dan Milne switches between sympathetic characters to sinister supporters of Nazism in the blink of an eye. Kelly Price plays all the female roles with sympathy, and glamour, when required. Menuhin’s script powers up like a thriller, all short, sharp scenes as Silbermann’s story gets underway. It does seem overly long at ninety minutes of playing time, but that might be because the action slows midway through. The story, like Silbermann, struggles to find its earlier pace as it drifts aimlessly from one destination to another. Once Silbermann has failed to escape from Germany, what is he doing, other than trying to keep out of the clutches of the Nazis? A more sharply defined goal in the second half might help our traveller reach his ultimate destination, even if it is a less than hopeful one.

The Finborough Theatre continues its well earned reputation for producing thoughtful scripts with this play. The Passenger certainly feels like it could eventually make the transition to a bigger stage, and a larger audience. It’s a timely period piece that reminds us, chillingly, that the past is never very far away.

SON OF A BITCH

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“sharp and funny solo show that offers a refreshingly candid take on motherhood”

SON OF A BITCH

Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 18th February 2025

by Joseph Dunitz

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at Southwark Playhouse venues:

SON OF A BITCH

SON OF A BITCH

SON OF A BITCH

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

★★★★

“a beautifully directed production that recreates the dark moodiness of the 1930s”

THE PASSENGER

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 13th February 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Steve Gregson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HE PASSENGER

THE PASSENGER

THE PASSENGER