UK Theatre Network

Every day I start out Mary Poppins but I end up Cruella DeVil!

Having begun life in Canada in the 1990s this evergreen show about five formerly professional women who find themselves at home with children has now arrived at Richmond Theatre after playing nine UK tours. The award-winning play was written by six women – formerly professional actors – who had endured the woes and joy of parenting and decided to share their experiences in a show about motherhood.  

The play cleverly reveals the agony and ecstasy of parenting as the audience is whooping and clapping with recognition. It deals with all the important elements of raising a child including every mum’s daily immersion in „bathwater, food, spit, snot, blood, vomit, urine and faeces.“ The five actresses - Gillian Taylforth of Eastenders, Tracy Shaw and Sally Ann Matthews of Coronation Street fame, Susie Fenwick, and Mandy Holliday – represent almost every aspect of motherhood. In a group counselling session complete with phony blue sky and green meadows in the background they recount their experiences in monologues whilst the rest of the cast listen attentively as members of the giant club of mums!

Gillian Taylforth impresses with a very vivid re-enactment of the birth of Robin’s first child and captures Robin’s wry bitterness beautifully as she keeps writing letters to her partner / husband describing her uneventful days as a full-time mum. Mandy Holliday’s „shit management“ sequence is hilarious as she finds herself submerged by a „brown tidal wave“ and later runs after her child in naked panic at a public swimming pool. Tracy Shaw’s artistically inclined Jill bemoans in a very funny scene that half of her brain was washed away with her placenta and the other half leaked out of her nipples - but her mind must be somewhere! Sally Ann Matthews’s account of the life and death struggle of her prematurely born son Ben sharply contrasts with the farcical elements of the show. Susie Fenwick’s character, the insecure Deborah, laments with cut-class diction that she has to make 10,000 decisions a day and each single one of them might lead her child to a life of serial killing, organized crime or worse - to becoming an estate agent.    

The show runs until 24 July 2010 at the Richmond Theatre and will then go on to Cheltenham.

Richmond Theatre,The Green, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1QJ
http://www.ambassadortickets.com/1741/659/Richmond/Richmond-Theatre/Mums-the-Word