The Good Enough Mums Club at the The Three Stags, Kennington, London. Picture: Michael Wharley
The Good Enough Mums Club continues at The Three Stags, Kennington, London, until 20 July.
The purpose of this small-scale new musical is to help mothers feel less isolated and anxious about the role of motherhood, and it has funding from the Design Council, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and Arts Council England to enable it to do that. At this early point in its life it is staging just nine performances in two south London pubs, both of which have also sponsored it.
It sounds off-puttingly worthy but actually The Good Enough Mums Club works well as a piece of entertainment and is, in places, both deeply moving and hilariously funny. Five women meet at a mother and toddler support group in a church hall, and the upstairs room in a pub – complete with pinned-up drawings, a few mirrors and chairs – is a simple but appropriate setting. Both Katherine Toy as Jenn and Rebecca Bainbridge as Pam are accomplished actor-musicians and use keyboard, violin, accordion and guitar to accompany the songs by Chris Passey and Amy Carroll.
All five are strong singers, and if some of the harmonies are occasionally ragged and the top notes not always quite in tune, it really doesn’t matter – at times the ‘mums’ even have the air of a comedy singing group or satirical cabaret act.
We need to hear every one of the lyrics by Emily Beecher and Sally Samad – and we do. The music is imaginatively tuneful but takes second place to the words. The jokes focus on things which every woman who has ever had a child will recognise, such as not being able to laugh without having a wee, dealing with awful tantrums in children and having the feeling that your body is no longer your own. The number which opens Act II, ‘Only My Nose is the Same’, is both funny and nicely observed, especially the ‘Head, shoulders, knees and boobs’ section.
Michaela Ellis gives a very fine performance as Aimee, especially when she is telling the audience that her son Ronan has a genetic disorder and will die in two or three years. The catch in her voice is beautifully judged and almost unbearably painful to listen to. Anna Byworth also gives a fine performance as Esme, who is suffering from delayed onset post-natal depression.
Jade Samuels is good as the single mother who has just found, to her horror, that she’s pregnant again, and Katherine Toy is very funny as the distraught mother whose children are so relentlessly demanding. Pam (Rebecca Bainbridge) is an interesting character. She seems smug, judgemental and infuriating – and we’ve all met people like her. In fact, underneath the facade, she is devastated, having caught her husband with the nanny, and struggles because she gets no support from her own mother who has made her feel inadequate all her life. And Bainbridge is well on top of a complex role.
All in all it’s an enjoyable and thoughtful 95 minutes of fairly informal musical theatre which Good Enough Productions is hoping will develop further in the future and have a longer shelf life in venues where it can reach more mothers.
Susan Elkin
* The Good Enough Mums Club has performances at The Three Stags, Kennington at 12.30pm (18 and 20 July) and 8pm (except 20 July), and at The Brewery, London, as part of Brit Mums Live, on 21 June.
www.thegoodenoughmumsclub.com/book-tickets
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