Untitled Matriarch Play (Seven Sisters) review, The Royal Court Theatre

Tonight at The Royal Court, a first. A heckler. He called out once. The cast took a beat and carried on. He called out again: loudly, well spoken. Well, we were in SW3.  The cast stopped and turned, including an actor wearing a blindfold, which she elegantly slid down onto her nose to check the action. The play, Untitled Matriarch Play (Seven Sisters), is about a mother of four who, at the age of 55, pays a surrogate to bear her a son. The heckling happened during the baby shower scene. The daughters, aged 35 to 15, were trying to bash open a piñata fashioned as a new born boy. Aha, I thought, this is the adult son, having a flashback; but just at that moment the usher jumped the man and bundled him out.

Baby it's old outside

What caused the outburst? The play's too long and the focus keeps moving, but it's pretty impressive; the latest in a series of new plays rehearsed in a week. The restraints imposed by that brevity are part of the fun. Tonight was the first outing for Untitled Matriarch Play (Seven Sisters).  Nikole Beckwith's characters are terrific, the story is inventive, the dialogue funny, and the insights poignant. It's like a reverse House of Bernarda Alba with an American mother - a lively Siobahn Redmond - who rails at her daughters for what she considers self-imposed social and emotional limitations.

Redmond is being worked like a horse as a member of this ensemble (six weeks, six plays), but holds up well. Bouquets to Anna Calder-Marshall as Grandma Sylvie. Her comic timing is perfect: every word and every movement is a gem. Also to Natasha Gordon as the rich, successful second child, Mimi. She doesn't put a foot wrong: she's vile and wonderful.

In conclusion:  Truisms about parenting - you want everything you never had for your children, then resent them for having everything; and the rumination on living into old age by Calder-Marshall - who mourns the three children aged from 2 to 63 - that she has lost, provide the ballast in a too long, but gloriously eccentric evening.

References
Royal Court Theatre, Tickets

The Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London SW3   This play is part of a season of one week plays ending 20 July.

Addendum, 14 July: The heckler, I am informed via a tweet to @portfoliowoman is on every night, so clearly part of the play (despite the usher classing him a troublemaker, when I asked). Thank goodness;)