An Evening With The Good Enough Mums Club was reviewed at the Pleasance Theatre, London. The show can also be seen at the Mast Mayflower Studios, Southampton on 6 May 2022.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Emily Beecher’s show, with songs composed by Chris Passey, has been in development for ten years. Next year, she told the audience with a gulp, it is – at last – to be fully staged.
Meanwhile here’s a taster, cabaret style, participative and more like a presentation than a show, although all five cast members (and the all female on-stage band) get the chance to showcase their considerable talent.
The thrust of The Good Enough Mums Club is that many women find motherhood pretty difficult, especially at the beginning. It can be isolating. Feelings of inadequacy are almost inevitable.
The five women from widely varied backgrounds who meet through their children in this show gradually realise that they are, despite their differences, a sorority. All the cast – who introduce themselves at the start – have quite young children and lots of personality.
Beecher (who suffered severe post-natal depression and psychosis) and producers Sarah Shead and Jade Samuels are all single mothers. They run workshops at which they meet other mothers and collect the stories which have helped to develop the characters and the narrative of The Good Enough Mums Club.
They are also concerned that 80% of female performers don’t return to the industry after having children so they do everything they can to dent that by, for example, running family-friendly rehearsal schedules and welcoming child carers such as partners or parents to come to rehearsal if it helps.
All this information is part of the show because Beecher pops up between numbers to talk to the audience with her prompt cards.
The songs are engagingly varied in style. I enjoyed the harmony in the opening number ‘Good Enough’ and was both moved and disturbed by the poignant song from a mother thinking about the troubled, picked-on future her boys were likely to face.
CiCi Howells, as Esme, sings magnificently – lots of passion and near perfect intonation and timing. And it’s all sparkily accompanied by three fine musicians on keys, bass guitar and percussion.
There’s a lot of rueful humour in this show. “Nothing is where I left it” they sing about body changes after childbirth before launching into a quick burst of “Head, shoulders, knees and boobs”.
It certainly left me keen to see the complete show when it launches. I like the songs and look forward to experiencing the plot which underlies them.
Susan Elkin
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.