REVIEWS REVIEWS
This is one of the best plays you will see this year. It will make you laugh and it will make you want to cry. You will walk away from the theatre searching you conscience after your morals and ethics have been disturbed. All this has been achieved in a gentle way by the skilful writing of Amanda Whittington as she leads you through the beginning of life.
Set in the swinging sixties when young people are finding their way through the emerging new found freedom. The music is the best you will possibly ever hear, the clothes have emerged from the drab aftermath of the war years to become experimental, with bright colours in venturesome designs and this has led people to believe that they can do anything without consequence, but of course there is always a price to pay. This is a play that deals with the price that women pay for their new found freedom. Gareth Tudor Price adds a master touch to the author’s fine writing as he allows his characters to emerge from Richard Foxton’s design of a house that could have been found all over Britain, called St. Saviour’s.
The story is of Mary, who has been going out with a flat sharing medical student that allows them to spend time together unchaperoned, as was the expected norm of the past generation. The consequence is that Mary has become pregnant; her mother, feeling the shame of the past, arranges for her daughter to have the baby away from the family home. A story is put about that the daughter has gone to look after an aunt in the country, thereby avoiding the imagined stigma attached to a baby being born out of wedlock. So the scene is set for you to go and see the consequences.
The cast are great. Mary, played by Joanna Christie, has had everything going for her, well educated, a good job and a steady boyfriend with prospects. Her Achilles heel is her mother Mrs Adams, played by Jacky Naylor, who shields her and does her best for her daughter as she sees it from the view of the past generation. Queenie, played by Natalie Blades, would have liked to have been the singer Dusty Springfield, but it is a dream and she has been to St Saviour’s before. Norma is played by Emily Chennery, a girl unsure of the consequences of her being at St. Saviour’s and is grief stricken when she finds out. Dolores, played by Sarah O’Keefe, is lacking in education and is consequently naive as a result and needs to be befriended, and is. These four girls find themselves in the care of Matron, played by Christine Cox, who appears to be unsympathetic, but is not. This is a cast of actresses who have come together, gelled and given fine interpretations of their characters. The music sets the time and pace as the cast merge into the songs of the singers of the time.
This play will affect its audience in many ways, but none will be able to leave the theatre without being moved in some way. This is great theatre so do not miss this chance to experience it. © BA
“Be My Baby” is in Hull from the 27th May to the 19th of June, 2004.
