Mum’s the Word
By Linda A Carson, Jill Daum, Alison Kelly, Robin Nichol, Barbara Pollard and Deborah Williams
Directed by Andrew Lynford
At Richmond Theatre 19th – 24th July and on tour in the UK.

There are times when I go to the theatre full of anticipation and they are then cruelly dashed as the performance doesn’t quite come off, the acting was shaky, the direction missed the point, the set didn’t quite work etc.. Then there are times when I have doubts, do I really want to see soap stars, is it a play or what. And then there are times when an absolutely beautiful little gem of a piece unfolds before my eyes and I wasn’t expecting it. ‘Mum’s the Word’ was that beautiful little gem. It stars Gillian Taylforth (Robin), Tracy Shaw (Jill), Sally Ann Matthews (Alison), Susie Fenwich (Deborah) and Mandy Holliday (Barbara), a mixture of former soap stars and a couple of others. At first I was a bit put off as they were all wearing microphones, common in stand up, but not normally seen in the theatre! It would be easy to say that the show was just a collection of stand up routines, but it wasn’t. The characters, based upon the writers did come alive in this very simple format and there were some very fine pieces of drama.
The show is essentially a series of stories about birth, babies and traumas of being a mum. Not unnaturally there is a great deal of humour as these essential important intelligent human beings become milking machines, insanitary sanitary workers and general household dogsbodies. I write this with no mums looking over my shoulder and with more than a bit of my tongue in my cheek. You can find humour in all jobs, but children must be amongst the richest vein of funnies, I do speak with some experience in this field as I have 27 thirteen year old daughters in my charge! What was particularly beautiful about this piece was not just the humour, but the tension as Alison unfolds her story about her premature baby, or the utter desperation as a mum searches for her lost baby or the horror and life change as your baby bounces head first onto a concrete floor. The audience had a huge amount of young women out in groups of sister bonding and also an abundance of pregnant women and about four men, there was a great deal of empathy from this audience and there seemed to be a great deal of shared experiences.
The show started off being written by a group of onetime actors now mothers, sitting around sharing their experiences and preparing for a festival in Vancouver. It has now become a standard in Australia, audiences of over half a million and there have been touring versions all over the world. It came to the UK in 2002 and there has been a whole string of notables queuing up to perform the pieces. They would have to go some to beat this cast. Sally Ann Field was magnificent with her one liners and sublime as she touched our hearts with her premature birth, Mandy Holliday was unbelievably brave and Tracy Shaw and Susie Fenwick were absolutely gorgeous around a superb lynch pin of Gillian Taylforth.
This is an absolutely must see show.

Reviewed by Evan Rule