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.