Playing With Grownups review, Theatre 503

Director Hannah Eidinow is good at turning fixed set pieces into good drama. Her production of Nichola McAuliffe's, Maurice's Jubilee, has only just finished it's UK tour and here she is in Battersea turning her talents to another front room: that of Joanna and Robert and, on the baby monitor, nine-week-old Lily.

Love lies breeding

Earlier this week I complained about a play at Hampstead Downstairs with no narrative arc. Playing With Grownups has so many, they form a guard of honour across the stage. This is as unsatisfactory as it is confusing, particularly because the way they're resolved is so contradictory it's difficult to know what writer, Hannah Patterson, is actually trying to show. Jo is played with such fury by Trudi Jackson that her husband is clearly a numpty to leave his books - tellingly, on 1950s Kitchen Sink drama - in her care, let alone his baby. She's  arguing that women with careers and children can't 'have it all' - it's either job or child. By the end it's clear she doesn't want it all - she just wants the job. This is fine, but for a woman who's devoted her life to challenging misogyny, her loathing of 'invisible women with prams' is the worst form of misogyny. She says it quite clearly: she prefers bringing dead writers to life as a publisher than sharing the maternal space, than being with her new baby. But hang on...  just before she appears to turn the tables on men and literally leave Robert holding the baby to see if he can 'have it all' without a wife, it turns out she may be mad. She may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Make your mind up, guys!

Meanwhile Stella, the precocious 16-year-old brought round as the latest conquest of 39-year-old university buddy, Jake, is an ingenue whose clear-eyed observations expose the silliness of the 'grownups', but then she falls into the trap of offering herself as comfort to Jo's husband, Robert, confirming the misogynistic fantasy that a woman's sexuality is a form of currency. And we haven't even touched on the themes around the devaluation of education, low rent ology degrees, the ivory towers and emperor's new clothes of academe, the predatory behaviour of middle-aged men etc etc...

In conclusion: Having said all of this, while Playing With Grownups won't send you home enlightened, it will certainly keep you entertained. It's pacy, it's tense, it's well acted and only runs 75 minutes. If you're local, have a look.


References
Theatre 503, tickets

Theatre 503 is at 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW.  This production has now closed.