Maternal Agony
“Poetry is list making masquerading as art.”
Beth
Plays about mothers are full of tangled emotions and plays about unconventional mothers even more so. Anna Mackmin directs her own play about mother and daughter, Beth (Celia Imrie) and Bo (Tamsin Greig) starting at the end when the mother has dementia and is in hospital waiting to find alternative care. Bo is trying to preserve some of her mother’s opportunity for choice in the face of the requirements of the NHS doctors and nurses.
The backstrokes of the title are the way time is delivered in the play. Scenes go backwards in time to elaborate key decisions in Bo’s history with her mother. Aged 40, after years of infertility, Bo is looking to adopt a child with special needs and she and Ted, whom we never see, but voiced by Rhashan Stone, find Skylar. In the present day, Skylar is at a special school some distance away and her parents are phoned repeatedly and asked to come and fetch her. So Bo now is mother to a very needy Skylar and faced with responsibility also for her mother and overloaded.
Lez Brotherston’s set is a side ward in the hospital with a bed featuring all the wires, catheters and monitoring machines. To the front of the stage for past scenes are a kitchen and some sitting room chairs so Beth pops out of bed to play in her past. She resists any of the maternal titles like Mum or Mummy or Mother and insists that Bo call her by her name.
The first act felt like hard work despite the obvious acting skill of Celia Imrie, the bottom of her long hair dyed pink, and Tamsin Greig’s moving picture of a woman coping with conflicting demands. It just feels so difficult and depressing.
A flashback to being 18 and Bo is due to go to her first term at university, 300 miles away and her mother fails to wake her in time to catch the train. This scene illustrates to us her mother’s desire to stay involved in her daughter’s life. Is this control? Bo doesn’t want to miss the first day of freshers’ week and suggests hitching there.
We hear an argument taking place behind the back wall of the auditorium. There is a scene featuring the mother’s woven hangings and talk of a craft fair where amusingly “ some nutter paints baby animals on pebbles.” Behind the hospital bed are movie scenes from a specially made film of both women together at the seaside and of Skylar (Chloe Hart and Tamilore Lawson).
As a piece I always wonder whether the creative input of a different director is a good idea and my conclusion is that the opportunity for Backstroke to come alive has been missed.
Editor of TheatreVibe.co.uk
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Production Notes
Backstroke
Written and Directed by Anna Mackmin
Cast
Starring:
Celia Imrie
Tamsin Greig
Anita Reynold
Chloe Hart
Georgina Rich
Lucy Briers
Rhashan Stone
Creatives
Director: Anna Mackmin
Designer: Lez Brotherston
Choreographer: Scarlett Mackmin
Video/projection designer: Gino Ricardo Green
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Sound Designer: Christopher Shutt
Information
Running Time: Two hours 30 minutes with an interval
Booking to 12th April 2025
Theatre:
Donmar Warehouse
Earlham Street
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9LX
Tube : Covent Garden
Website: donmarwarehouse.com
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Donmar Warehouse
on 22nd February 2025