My vague memories from seeing Charlotte Keatley’s play as a student on its 1989 London première were that it was one of those works that never really moved past the general description “about women” to explore issues of sexism, attainment or the like. I was partly right, but much more wrong. It is true that Keatley is engaged more in observation than in arguing: she presents a picture of four generations of women from 1940 to 1987, not a thesis about their lives. Nevertheless, it is a complex yet sensitive piece about keeping secrets and the consequences thereof, and principally about the interference patterns which motherhood and personal independence generate with each other. It is summed up by one character: “You do what you think is right for your daughter, and you find it’s not what she wanted or needed.”

This revival by Paul Robinson (about to move from Battersea’s Theatre503 to take up the artistic directorship of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough) is also initially deceptive. It begins with a scene in which all four characters come together as a fantasy pre-teen gang; not only can I not see Keatley’s point in writing these occasional scenes, but the first impression is that childhood = shouty. When we move into the principal dramatic territory, however, things improve out of all recognition.

Maureen Lipman leads with the wry understatement she furnishes so well as grandmother Doris, with Katie Brayben selling her character Jackie’s genuine belief that her central, shattering decision is taken from a spirit of altruism, even though we may see it otherwise. This is the resolution to give her own daughter Rosie to be brought up as Jackie’s sister, keeping her actual parentage secret. Serena Manteghi remains a bit strident as Rosie, but this is entirely in character. The most modest, and in many ways the most potent, performance is that of Caroline Faber as Margaret, Doris’s daughter, Jackie’s actual and Rosie’s surrogate mother. Keatley, Robinson and cast ensure that what could have been little more than spats and sententiousness emerges as a fabric of difficult but essentially loving and giving relationships.

Written for the Financial Times.