My Mother Said I Never Should - Review

St James Theatre, London

****

Written by Charlotte Keatley

Directed by Paul Robinson

Katie Brayben

There's a pain and beauty to this first London revival of My Mother Said I Never Should in nearly 30 years that is, at times, quite devastating.

Like a ride on a fairground waltzer, Charlotte Keatley's narrative spins us around and through four generations of Doris Partington's family. Her scenes jump between the years, playing out the evolution of female emancipation in post-war England. 

Keatley's writing is finely honed. She has crafted a (subtly updated) play that is as much a commentary upon Britain's social history as it is a study of four women. There may be a timelessness to the challenges of a loveless marriage, but whilst Maureen Lipman's Doris weathered 61 years of wedlock, confessing on her husband's death that "I don't think we liked each other very much", daughter Margaret sees her own marriage fail in middle-age in the 1980s, whilst granddaughter Jackie faces her own teenage, agonising compromise following the unplanned birth of her daughter Rosie.

Lipman heads a quartet that must surely represent one of the finest ensembles in town. In a play that explores the power and the bind of motherhood, Keatley's characters are stoic. Lipman's brings a measured wisdom and a quiet wounded pain to Doris. All seeing and all knowing, she seasons the morsels of wit that Keatley has sprinkled with a perfect nuance, capturing our affection and respect.

Katie Brayben as Jackie has a first half that could be likened to “Fantine's back story”. Her pain as mother Margaret takes Rosie to raise as her own is a masterclass in understated agony. And it's not just the acting too that is so brilliant - it is Keatley's brutally honest text. Unlike Fantine these women aren’t heroines of grand literature. Fictitious yes, but played out against the suburbs of Manchester and Croydon, they are a part of all our lives.

Caroline Faber's Margaret faces her own agonies. Supporting her daughter, loving and raising her granddaughter and ultimately deserted by her husband, she brings a resonant cadence to her speeches. And then there's Serena Manteghi's gorgeous Rosie. In the early scenes, when the stage-baby is simply a mass of swaddling, Manteghi sits stage right, gurgling and cooing and (brilliantly) giving vocal life to the linen. As she grows into adolescence we forget that the actor's an adult. Manteghi captures Rosie’s childhood without cliché and as the inevitable denouement looms, her pain is refreshingly free of melodrama.

Paul Robinson directs with sensitivity as Simon Slater's sound and music enhance proceedings, with the production marking an impressive debut by producers Tiny Fires. 

Go see this play – the acting is sensational.

Runs until 21st May

Photo credit: Alex Harvey-Brown

The Railway Children - Review

King's Cross Theatre, London

****

Written by Mike Kenny
Directed by Damian Cruden

Serena Manteghi

In reviewing The Railway Children I must declare an interest. I love trains and the stage show of E.Nesbit's classic tale, that not so long ago was putting Waterloo's mothballed Eurostar terminus to good use, had long caught my eye. So with the production now having steamed across the river to a venue straddling some disused tracks between London's Kings Cross and St Pancras termini and with a 4-4-0 lovingly restored locomotive topping the bill, I could not resist.

The history on display in this carefully crafted play goes far beyond England’s railway heritage. Notwithstanding Nesbit's socialist inclinations, she firmly believes in a class-divided England where everyone has their place. Class brings privilege and the responsibilities of noblesse oblige, but as ever it is moneyed wealth that brings the social mobility and connections that the Old Gentleman clearly enjoys. Humble stationmaster Perks proudly lives in poverty with his washerwoman wife and brood of six kids and there’s a glimpse too of a life before an NHS or welfare state, as the valiant railway children use their initiative to raise funds for mother's medication. Nesbit also throws in a political morsel, with the children’s father being wrongly imprisoned for spying - even the Government cannot be trusted. 

But enough of the politics, for The Railway Children was, is and always will be, to mis-quote Meghan Trainor, "all about that train". The venue is a carefully crafted tent, which on press night did well to see off the noisy blusters of Storm Rachel. The audience straddle an ingenious traverse that runs a platform length and in between which glide trucks (heroically manhandled by strapping stagehands) bearing the story’s tableaux. In the movie Jaws, Steven Spielberg famously kept the audience waiting for ages before getting sight of the shark. So it is here, with Cruden throughout act one suggesting the presence of passing trains by using light, sound and a fiendishly clever hidden machine that puffs billows of smoke up and down the track. The stagecraft is delightful and the suspension of disbelief, perfect.

The cast all convince, suggesting time, place and above all, stiff upper lips. Jeremy Swift’s Mr Perks and Caroline Harker’s pre-Suffragette Mother lead the grown-up roles with conviction, whilst Serena Manteghi, Jack Hardwick and Louise Calf are the believably adolescent children. There is a delightful mise en scene too. As the audience take their seats (having entered via a themed foyer that would do the Disney Corporation proud), the piped in sounds of steam engines shunting and passing by are almost enough to suggest one has stepped back in time. And of course that famous final scene, all swirling smoke and steam as Bobbie rushes towards her freed father, crying "Daddy, my daddy!" will tug at heartstrings throughout the tent.

But above all bravo to the city of York, and its National Railway Museum and Theatre Royal for getting behind Mike Kenny’s vision some years ago. As the first half ends, almost all of the ingenious illusions (and I'm not about to spoil the biggest illusion of the night) give way to reality as the huge and gorgeous steam train draws to a breathtaking halt, just managing to avoid the eponymous landslip. The audience cheer and the kids are open jawed in amazement. It is what theatre is all about!

Runs to September 6th 2015