M is a writer. M is a woman. Hijacked by motherhood

(the) Woman
at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford
on Tuesday, February 18 and Wednesday 19

Review by JON LEWIS

Tough Love

Jane Upton’s autobiographical new play (the) Woman for New Perspectives and the Royal & Derngate, Northampton at the North Wall Arts Centre, reflects on life after birth.

Lizzy Watts, no stranger to the North Wall after impressing in Kae Tempest’s Wasted in 2013 and Phil Porter’s Blink in 2014, is magnetic as the protagonist M. A working-class playwright with an edgy hit play under her belt now in her 30s, M bitterly moans about post-birth leaks, legs with varicose veins and a vibrant libido that her husband (André Squire) cannot satisfy.

This is a sexually explicit play. When M, a mother of a little girl, bumps into an old school boyfriend (Cian Barry) selling dodgy towels on a stall, her life starts to unravel. They recall making love on the school playing field; it does not take long for them to rekindle their feelings in the back of his van. However, after he expresses his disappointment that she sacrificed her creative potential for a life of domestic drudgery, M reassesses her future.

M gets pregnant again. Her baby boy is born with a severe health condition, with weeks in an incubator. He is not expected to survive.

It’s here that she meets another mother (Jamie-Rose Monk) whose baby ultimately does not live, but M’s does.

All these scenes belong in the new play M has written that fails to impress her London producers. They want her to write a crowd-pleasing musical or a thriller. It’s worth waiting for one of the surprises at the end of the play when the producers’ wishes hilariously come true.

Who M’s plays are for is up for discussion.

She says they are not meant for her working-class friend (Monk, doubling) whose only recent experience of theatre was going to a Tina Turner musical in London.

There is no feeling that (the) Woman should be placed in a women-only, middle-class only silo though.

However, it's an uncomfortable show because M’s experiences of motherhood and her descriptions of her unhealthy mother’s body feel very real.

It’s worth every second of discomfort though, for Watt’s scintillating performance.