Vers @ Hen & Chickens Theatre Bar

Vers is a double bill of short plays performed by the same exceptional trio of actors. 

The Dinner Scene is first; centred around a couple having dinner (who are interjected by a hilarious Chloe Taplin as the restaurant employee) whose conversation begins surface level, and as they dine dives deeper and deeper until they are having a deep-seeded argument about the fundamentals of respecting one another and the planet. The argument is funny and relatable as each demonstrates the extremes of contemporary middle class concerns, from the vegan offended that the boyfriend ordered pepperoni to the boyfriend offended that the partner would try to police their eating as someone recovering from an eating disorder. As the argument gets more subterranean, the play is interspersed with surreal moments of heightened text-free movement, signifying their underlying emotions and frustrations. While exceptionally well performed and rehearsed (the whip smart and rapid fire dialogue in particular, coupled with some brilliant comic timing) the play as a whole feels like a not quite finished idea. It begs for another round of dramaturgy, as there is really something in there. 

The second play, Poofs with Guns, is a highly campy take on 50’s crime dramas set around the gay community in East London. The text is part silly crime drama, part reflective history, part mash up of audio clips, and is overall quite engaging. Again the performers are really strong; you can see in the design and direction the vision for what the “bigger” version of this production is. In particular, by positioning the story around 50’s gay culture, and using Polari in the dialogue, the production brings to light a piece of history not known by many in contemporary circles. I would have liked to see them go even further with the camp; rather than the light makeup we got for the 2 criminals, give us a full beat face, or even clown (as was in the promotional materials!) — because the moments when the production really leaned into the camp, it was fabulous. 

Small Forward - Belarus Free Theatre @ Barbican Pit

Working with famous Belarusian basketball player Katya Snetsyna, Belarus Free Theatre’s latest production, KS6: Small Forward, focusses on Katya’s experience of coming to the realisation of the atrocities her government commits against its citizens, and being ostracised and outcast herself after standing up against the dictatorship, speaking out, and coming out as homosexual. 

The production deploys Belarus Free Theatre’s trademark playful stagecraft, this time framing the production around a basketball game, including a kiss cam, live DJ, and half time basket competition. While it is fun and engaging, the production as a whole doesn’t quite hang together — which is unfortunate, as the story is compelling, and important to raise awareness. 

The use of music was clever, with the live DJ Blanka Barbara not only hyping up the crowd as if at a basketball game, but then also live mixing the underscoring for the entire play. The design used the tools of a gym and basketball game to create multiple spaces and evoke feelings which were at times really powerful, but also at times didn’t quite have the desired impact. 

All in all not a bad production, just not their best — which is unfortunate as the subject matter deserves attention. While led by Snetsyna who is an engaging person (she lit up in the pre-show chat) most moments of her as an actor fell flat — which is fair for a first time actor leading such a huge story. Additionally, I really liked the touch of sharing images and QR to write to prisoners, but although it did tie in to an element of the story (when she speaks of her friend who was imprisoned) the link feels tenuous — and again here I just wanted it to connect a little more deeply. 

The Years @ Harold Pinter Theatre

Adapting an epic novel which spans multiple decades is no easy feat, and in particular, one which follows the same woman through phases of her life. Eline Arbo’s adaptation tackles this with seeming ease; with 5 actors portraying the woman at each phase of her life, while also embodying the other people and events in her orbit, there is no artifice of realism. The production’s clever staging brings to life major events, all while making it quite clear we are watching a performance.

Each of the 5 women is given some properly chunky material to work through, the emotional baggage we pick up as we age, the memories of the past. There is no weak link in this production, across the script, performers, direction, and design. It is clearly well conceived — so much so that it makes me wonder whether there could be another production that would do it justice.

As you can imagine, covering the life of a woman who was born during WW2 through the many radical shifts of female rights and public existence in this time, from illegal back room abortions to the feminist movement and increase of divorce rates covers a lot of ground. In what definitely didn’t seem like the first time (from the swift professionalism of stage management and the exceptional technique of the performers to pause and then drop back in) the show had to be stopped due to someone in the audience being overwhelmed by the abortion scene. While it is risque as far as West End performance, it was brilliant to see materials that was modern, feminist, and intellectually challenging on a West End stage.

A very good production of a good script - definitely worth your evening.

Tender @ Bush Theatre

Eleanor Tindall’s latest play, Tender, weaves a story of two people who at first appear to be disconnected, each working through their own trauma, who meet by happenstance, and then are drawn together. As the play progresses, we learn that in fact, they were connected all along. 

The script begins rather poetically, with a story of Ivy’s self destruction as a teen. The poeticism continues, through pulsing walls and choreographed interactions, with some truly delightful moments between the two actors. That said, the script and production don’t quiite click into place and race forward in the way you would like them to — the style of the script jumps around a little too much, and despite the efforts of the very talented cast, it is good, but just never reaches great. Frustratingly, there are glimpses of what could have been for the production - through perhaps another round of dramaturgy. 

Annabel Baldwin stands out in the highly skilled duo, with their ability to embody the text with beautiful subtlety. 

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister @ Camden People's Theatre

Why A Black Woman Will Never Be Prime Minister takes us through 9 months (or 3 trimesters) of a young woman’s quest to break the cycles she comes from. She is child of a single mother who works incessantly to make a better life for her daughter; her daughter who has taken that gift and translated it into acceptance to university and an internship with a candidate for prime minister, alongside a steady relationship. The text intersperses spoken word poetry with direct address monologue and two-handed scenes (with her boss at the internship). The production moves fluidly through these elements, propelling the story forward as we learn that external barriers aren’t the only forces at work against this young woman; indeed she learns she became pregnant just before uni began, so that the trimester cycle of uni and the political campaign dovetail with her own pregnancy.

The two performers do a capable job bringing the characters and world to life, and the director sets a fun stylistic tone upfront; however as the seriousness of the challenges she is facing shift, the tone of the production doesn’t quite shift to the same degree, causing those more serious and touching moments to not work as well as they could. The script was strong in parts but did have some rather expository elements which could be done without. 

NOWHERE - Fuel Theatre @ Battersea Arts Centre

Where are we safe? Khalid Abdalla’s solo show leaves nothing untouched in its challenge to the audience. Blending personal history with the politics that overshadow it, Khalid takes us through his family’s history as it relates to revolt, colonialism, and the current imperialist ventures in the West Bank and Palestine.

If it sounds heavy, it is - at times. But at times it is also darkly funny, light, playful, and despite the darkness, filled with hope.

Director Omar Elerian uses a brilliant blend of media to bring us this story - projections of old photographs, video which is and is not live (and it hard to tell when it transitions), and perhaps most movingly, images on a phone. To give the audience a story about contemporary uprisings which are made possible in many ways by the smartphone, which we far away primarily learn about through our phones, is nothing short of genius.

The play moves at a blistering pace and yet feels gentle, thoughtful. The performance, production, and script all come together in the most beautiful way, that the audience are left a little breathless, a little teary, and completely reminded of why we make theatre. This. This is why.

Twine @ The Yard Theatre

Selina Thompson’s newest play, Twine, explores adoption, and the search of an adopted child to understand their history. Set in a magical between place, Sycamore has been split into three parts to represent her at different points in her life. Seed is her at 5 days old (when she was adopted), Sapling is her as a teen, and Bark is adult her, hardened to the realities of life.

The premise is intriguing, and there are moments where it is truly exciting, however as a whole piece there are moments that just don’t work. The first act worked better than the second, using music to engage and weave the story, although it ran a bit long and flagged toward the end of the act. The second act felt a bit disjointed from the first until the very final moments.

The music and performances were all strong, supporting a strong idea, but the script just didn’t quite have the pop it could have.

As You Like It (The Land Acknowledgement) by Cliff Cardinal @ Lift Festival

How do you hold an audience accountable? Cliff Cardinal’s As You Like It premiered in Toronto the day we moved to London, so I didn’t get to see it. . . but it was hard to avoid the furor it caused amongst Canadian theatregoers and critics. Some adored it; others were appalled. And in a way, that was the point. Reminding comfortable middle class audiences in Canada of the things they do and say to make themselves feel better, without actually doing anything.

So when I saw that this show was coming to London for the LIFT festival, I was excited of course, but also intrigued. In Canada, audiences are familiar with land acknowledgements as a construct, and have at least SOME knowledge of the horrific acts against indigenous people. But how would this translate to English audiences? I’ve now lived here nearly 3 years (this time around) and am reminded regularly how little Brit’s think about Canada, much less the politics of indigeneity, or indeed what the concept is at all. Furthermore, not only do they not think about Canada, but they are wildly underinformed (in the main) about their country’s role in “creating” the country, stealing the land, and the ensuing 200+ years of history.

Cardinal is an engaging performer, disarming the audience and making them feel comfortable, creating truly funny moments early on. He made some really clever adaptations to the script, providing some context to the UK audience that were necessary for the script to work, and for the accountability to have a hope of happening. He did a brilliant job in bringing this audience in — educating them while also adapting to their knowledge level, making it all the easier to turn the knife when the moment came. And you could feel this in the audience when the moment came (and came again. . . and again).

My only question is whether it could have gone further. . . did that audience really leave with a sense of what happened, continues to happen, and is in parallel with the much more publicised genocides? Or are they still sold the Canadian propaganda of nice people in a clean country with lots of trees? It is hard to tell.

Piece of Me @ Camden People's Theatre

At first, a seemingly silly exploration into childhood passions. And then, a deep dive into what it means to live in our hyper-recorded, overly monitored reality. Piece of Me frames around a young girl and her friends’ pop-star aspirations in the 90’s, but asks signficantly deeper questions about what we are giving up when we live our public lives.

Accompanied by an exceptionally interesting sound design, and some head bopping pop tunes, the play takes on some huge questions. I’m not convinced it answered all it set out to, but have to applaud the delightfully meta-theatrical exploration and play with form.

What (is) a Woman @ Arcola Theatre

Billed as a one woman play with music, this show veers much further into Musical Theatre than I expected, although the songs can’t be claimed to advance the plot. That’s not the fault of the songs, but rather a narrative that is unclear. It jumps around in time and place - fine - but nothing really happens. It is simultaneously not a meditation on any one topic, or exploration into the postdramatic.

It is unfortunate, because all of the individuals creating the work are clearly very skilled at what they do — the underscoring from live bassist and keyboard are exceptional, the lighting design clever (if not altogether aligned with the action), the performer highly skilled as a singer and dancer, the choreographer creating intricacy. . . but somehow none of these elements mesh together into a cohesive moment or succession of moments.

I might be biased, but it felt as through there was an absence of a dramaturgical hand in the writing, which carried through to the production.

Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel by Tim Crouch @ Battersea Arts Centre

What are we doing when we go to the theatre? Tim Crouch’s latest play challenges the very existence of theatre, its purported value and necessity, whether it is alive at all. Structured in his inimitable manner, taking the viewpoint of an actor inside a production who is experiencing the aftermaths of that production while addressing the audience, the “performance” in this case - which we never see, of course - is of a “modern dress production” of King Lear. A play which falls into the category of big and important and meaningful plays. A role stars are desperate to play, and which audiences regularly hand over large sums to watch.

But what are we doing when we do this? Paying to watch simulated death, surrounded by people (we assume) have similar tastes and values and lives to us. Good people and compassionate people who care and read and donate. Paying to watch simulated death. Paying to be seen in this place. Paying for the comfort of this ritual. A ritual of wealth and privilege and self congratulation. Where everyone knows how to behave and nothing bad actually happens. Where we can tut and gasp at the terrible things happening, then applaud at the reminder of how far they are away from us when the lights go down, safe in our bubbles.

But we aren’t, of course. The world of King Lear isn’t as far from us as we want it to be, nor is the real outside world. So when that real world creeps in, we’re affronted. We’re annoyed. We’re busy watching a fictional world about a terrible leader and worse father, paralleled by another terrible leader and even worse father (not our world, of course).

There are so many layers in this script, as there always are in Crouch’s work, that I’m still digesting the many resonances and connections. That said, for me in this moment the resonances above are the strongest - that big, looming question of why we are even trying to make this (possibly dead) art form in this (terribly broken) society and pretending it makes any difference. We could have stayed home and warm and watched Netflix.

Crouch’s script doesn’t just ask these big questions; it offers answers that are discomforting. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this at all?

If you can make it to this production, please do. You will be challenged, but you won’t be disappointed.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery @ Playwrights Horizons

I viewed this during the live to zoom performance, presented by Jeremy O. Harris in October 2020.

Will Arbery’s Pulitzer finalist play is challenging, both in terms of the characters it presents, and the ideas it demands we confront. Framed around 4 young people reuniting at their faith-based college for an event celebrating one of their teachers receiving a prestigious promotion, the 4 are now at an afterparty, perhaps a bit tipsy, and dealing with the roiling emotions that are inevitable when a person returns to a place after some time.

These are challenging individuals, who bring us in to their world not through immersion, but through subversion; at first, the characters say and do things that seem perfectly “normal” (read; liberal) however as the play unfolds and their relationships and discussions return to old familiarities, their positions and statements begin to bristle against this. These individuals are completely familiar and yet altogether alien. They remind us that the people whom we may want to vilify in our thoughts for having views that seem untenable to us, may actually be more like us than we think.

The play, for me, demands we question the belief too tightly held, so aggressively and fervently grasped that it is morphed, and morphs us.

This was a re-staging for zoom of the original Playwrights Horizons production. Leveraging the individual screens of Zoom, director Danya Taymor created the dark stillness of a rural evening beautifully. While the stage version would have had all four in the same space, something unique happened when the actors were divided, when we saw each of them facing the camera directly, arguing with one another, but also somehow peering into the eyes of the viewer. The shifting quips and opinions, short responses bubbling into one another, in this format felt like a Facebook argument come to life.

I don’t want to give too much away, but would simply encourage that if you have the chance to read it or see it, do.

What Happens To You, Happens To Me by Susanna Fournier - Canadian Stage

This is a free audio experience you can listen to here, until August 1, 2020.

This fresh new isolation-inspired audio play from Susanna Fournier is an exploration of connection, of storytelling, of collaboration. We hear one voice (the delightful Kristen Thomson) inviting us to listen and connect with her. I listened to the audio-only version (there is also a version with video images if you prefer), and spent the approximately 16 minutes thinking through questions of time and hope, and more importantly, what comes next.

The piece asks audiences to engage with it, although the parameters of this are unclear. Many questions are asked, divided into chapters, but really it is the final question that is pressing and holds urgency.

Definitely worth checking out before it is gone.

Ritual - Podcast Plays from Dirty Protest Theatre & National Theatre Wales

Ritual is a series of 3 audio plays curated by Dirty Protest Theatre in Wales, with National Theatre Wales. You can listen to them via your favourite podcast service, details and links here.

I listened to these in order. In their materials, Dirty Protest indicate that their intent is for us to listen while we do our daily ritual - the laundry, the washing up, exercise - so I took them with me for some daily tasks.

Soaring by Hefin Robinson tells the story of two “penpals” who communicate with one another at the edge of the millennium, by mailing recorded tapes. A younger man and an older woman, on opposite parts of the country, communicate back and forth, reaching an intimacy between them despite being strangers, as they confess to one another, and work out their personal challenges. The story is captivating; I listened while out for a walk, and found myself completely immersed in the tension of the piece.

Double Drop by Lisa Jên Brown is the story of a young girl, wrestling with her own desire to be herself in the 90’s rave scene counterculture, yet finding her own actions at conflict with this desire to distance herself from her family’s reputation. What is really exciting about this piece is the pace at which it moves, and the way the beautiful compositions by 9Bloc drive the play forward. I listened to this one while out shopping, and found my own pace increasing with the intensity of the lead character, Esmi’s, energy and concern.

Unbound by Remy Beasly, focuses on two women. Funnily enough, although I listened to this one doing the least activity — sitting on my balcony enjoying a sunset — I somehow remember the least about the words and the story. That isn’t to say it wasn’t interesting, but something in the rhythm of the women’s conversation, the use of sound, lulled me into just thinking about that, and not the words or what was happening to the characters. It almost felt like I was overhearing a conversation nearby.

The trio of plays were recorded in the actor’s homes, and then edited together. The whole series is directed by Catherine Paskell. They are well worth taking a little time to check out, as the sound design and performances are fantastic, and the stories, especially Soaring, seem to mirror our own moment of separation from one another.

Small Island adapted by Helen Edmundson - National Theatre [recorded 2019]

I watched the recording of the 2019 production via The National Theatre here - you can too until June 25.

First things first; Leah Harvey is an absolutely charming performer. Without question, her liveliness and tenacity propel this story, and demand our attention. This is a truly outstanding feat, considering the size of the production (40 actors!! The Olivier!!!) and a stunning visual design, accompanied by strong ensemble performances. Somehow Harvey manages to sparkle through it all, the glint in her eye or the pain she is feeling superseding every ounce of the highly impressive stagecraft going on around her.

On the whole, the movement of this production - the people, objects, everything - was fluid and captivating. Rooms merging in and out of one another, spaces transforming before our eyes.

The play tells one story of the Windrush generation, Black Jamaicans who moved to the UK in the post-war period, sold the story of a better life, better opportunities — and met with racism and prejudice that persists in today. The story itself, adapted from Andrea Levy’s epic novel, is compelling, insightful, and heartbreaking. It is rare that an adaptation fulfils, and yet makes me hungry to read the original — I immediately put the book on my “to read” list.

The magnitude of this story, the scope and breadth of it, were beautifully apparent throughout the production. While Small Island focuses on 4 key individuals and their journeys, the overall feeling - with a largely empty stage filled with mapped projections, bodies, shadows, reminds us that this is just one storyline of hundreds.

Try to catch this one if you can.

Review. News Play by Madeleine Brown @ Toronto Fringe

From the team that brought us the 2018 hit Everyone Wants a T-Shirt, News Play is a fun and stylized allegory about the perils of using others for our own advantage. The cast are all wonderfully smart and funny, and director Aaron Jan does a great job creating a made-up space that hearkens to the children’s books the two protagonists write.

The show got a lot of laughs from the late night audience, but I can’t say that I found the writing to be as insightful and snappy as Brown’s previous work. It isn’t bad, per say, it just felt a little more broad than the past work I’ve seen, like it could use tightening up of the ideas.

review. Unsafe by Sook-Yin Lee @ Canadian Stage

The funny thing is, I never felt unsafe. I felt that this discussion, this demand for interrogation of censorship, of what censorship even means, was and is so urgently necessary. Who gets the commissions? Whose voice is heard? Whose perspective is excluded.

Sook-Yin Lee’s Unsafe is an exploration of these topics, using her skills and notoriety as a journalist and provocateur to delve into a series of interviews. The interviews are clearly edited; we see the cuts, the fast forwards in the video. She speaks of things that happen that she can’t share the details of, because permission was taken away, or never granted in the first place. The meta-journey through the creation of the piece, through the relationship of these two artists to the work and to each other, is familiar. Initially set up as a quiz show or ted talk, the play worked best, when it veered from that format of a staged discussion and into a representative world, one where theatricality was the most important, and if drama happened, so be it.

The ingenious staging from Sarah Garton Stanley served to amplify the right moments, and to highlight for us that the performance was self-aware. The images and movement about the stage were delightful, using the space in the Berkeley Street Theatre to its utmost potential to shape-shift into different worlds that were all a part of Lee’s intellect.

The conversation about censorship has moved underground, so to speak; it isn’t overt, in shutting down shows, but rather in the very funding models and commissioning models and support models that exist in this country for making new work. Lee’s interrogation really underscored (for me, anyway) the frustration that the topic, although a worthy one, was first offered to one White Guy, and then to Another. I’m grateful that the second one accepted, and brought in a new perspective…and then stepped back at just the right moment to let this work shine in the way it needed to. No offence to Zack Russell, but this isn’t a topic for a traditional play.

It was certainly interesting to watch this highly theatrical interpretation, right on the heels of watching the Forced Entertainment “Speak Bitterness” livestream, which was on the very opposite end of the theatricality spectrum, vehemently and insistently un-theatrical.

Again, I didn’t feel unsafe, perhaps because I’m the very generation of artist who grew up watching Sook-Yin Lee on Much Music. Exploring, provoking, experimenting…and just existing as a wonderfully quirky and unapologetic artist in space, with a lot of questions. Who, at least in some part, was inspired (or provoked) by Lee’s edgy and demanding nature, to make the work I do. Unsafe just reminded me that the teen in someone’s basement in suburban Winnipeg, watching Much Music with her friends, isn’t too far away. And she hopes that the people who needed to see this, and needed to think about these things, did. And will continue to do so.

review. A Blow in the Face - Bald Ego & Nightwood @ Theatre Centre

Postpartum depression is a challenging topic to talk about in a truly theatrical manner. How do you represent an experience that most women experience in some manner, but which differs for each experience of it, in a manner that will be sufficiently specific while simultaneously relatable? Lisa Ryder’s script is one of the best efforts at this I have seen. It begins in a fairly normal-looking home; a couple are dealing with a new baby, husband needs to leave for a couple weeks for work, there are household things to do on top of the all-consuming baby care. Quickly we spin into a weird and zany world where two aliens are representative of the weird, sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous ideas that creep around in a new mother’s brain.

Monica Dottor’s direction is beautifully choreographed; the three lead performers are deft in their physicalization, so deeply rooted in their bodies that the strange and highly stylized movements seem completely natural, allowing the audience to slip into the mind and world of Alice, the new mother. It is weird. It is funny. It is wonderful. At a snappy 70 minutes, it leaves you satisfied, rarely with a moment to stop and breathe with its frenetic pace. Rather like motherhood itself…

A Blow In The Face runs to April 14, do catch it if you can.

review. What I Call Her by Ellie Moon @ Crow's Theatre

Full Disclosure: I saw this show in the first preview, so aspects of the performances and staging may have changed since I saw it.

Ellie Moon follows up her verbatim play from 2017 Asking For It stepping out of the #metoo and Ghomeshi moment, and into a complex story of a family dealing with their history. The play centres on two sisters and their dying mother who we never see, navigating their relationships with one another, with her, and with the men in their lives. The only man we see is Kate (the older sister’s) boyfriend, though we also hear about their father, and their mom’s new husband.

I felt as though the first part of the play, setting up the relationship between Kate and Kyle, was sluggish and lacking in urgency. It lasted an extraordinarily long time and felt like it was trying to fit too many ideas in (I won’t give spoilers here…). It is when Kate’s sister, Ruby, arrives uninvited, that the play begins to sing. In my opinion, it could do with dramaturgical work that helps it cut to the chase sooner, because the complex tension between the sisters is what gets really interesting to watch, how their behaviour to one another and in the presence of one another is so clearly different than it is with others. Ellie Elwand sparkles with fiery intensity, and Michael Ayres is extremely likeable as the boyfriend stuck in the middle of the sibling hellstorm.

Director Sarah Kitz does well helping the actors navigate the density of the material and creating some nice relationships. The choice to use a thrust setup didn’t quite work for me; I could sense what she was going for…a voyeuristic sense that the walls have just fallen off this apartment, but with audience on 3 sides (though predominantly on 2) the actors had to serve too many angles, causing the blocking to come off as stilted. I think it could have benefitted instead from an alley, perhaps, giving the actors more freedom.

Overall I think there is a seed of an extremely interesting play in here, and I hope it will be uncovered through further development of the script.

review. Secret Life of a Mother by Hannah Moscovitch @ Theatre Centre

Hannah Moscovitch has teamed up with Maev Beatty and Ann-Marie Kerr to share an immensely personal, highly theatrical and yet viscerally real story of motherhood. The trials of becoming a mother, and then the intense, challenging, terrifying world of being a mother.

While the story is intriguing, it does not, of course, reflect everyone’s personal experiences. It couldn’t. Motherhood is a myriad of experiences, all slightly different than the other. But a good story doesn’t necessarily reflect one’s own experiences exactly; rather it triggers memories and thoughts about your own experiences. Things you had forgotten, or pushed away. Recognition of a sentiment. In this, Moscovitch is immensely successful.

Maev Beatty is a force. Her performances are known to be filled with emotional truth, and this is no different. What is truly fantastic here is the sheer range she displays in matters of minutes; jumping in and out of the character of Hannah to the character of Maev, performing performance, rehearsal, the reality of shifting focus in motherhood beautifully mirrored in the shape of the play and its performance.

Director Ann-Marie Kerr creates beautiful images; dangerous and vulnerable, while also incredibly strong. The inventive use of water and projection and audio/video recording, coupled with stunning lighting design by Leigh Ann Vardy created spaces out of nothing, evocative images and pictures in every moment. It created tension without being tense, and a specific feeling of community, amplified by the plexiglass reflection where the audience could somewhat, at times, see themselves on the stage, too.

My only dislike, would be the final few moments. While the images were beautiful, evocative of a womb, and then of reflection of the self, I felt that it lacked the same energy and purpose as the earlier moments…the urgency faded too quickly.

On the whole, I appreciated the informality of the structure, the work that felt inherently female. This work has a momentum, an urgency, and an intensity. As the artists say in their notes, and in the script itself; there isn’t real work about motherhood. People don’t talk about miscarriage, or the reality of childbirth and its many permutations enough. They don’t talk about the anxiety of carrying first in the womb, and then in your arms. The struggle to continue to be a person and not just a mom, but at the same time, being shaped by motherhood every day. And if we consider how many audience members and theatre makers are women, that just doesn’t make sense. I applaud the artists for their courage in making and sharing this intensely personal and vulnerable story. It encourages me to share mine.