A few years ago, one of my now grown-up children gave me a Mother's Day card that I still keep on display. It says on the front: "MOTHERHOOD: Powered by Love. Fuelled by Coffee. Sustained by Wine."
It is an apposite and, on the surface, light-hearted précis of a survival strategy adopted by mothers wherever coffee and wine are habitually consumed. A less cheerful analysis of course is that this most baffling and emotionally fulfilling of roles is not always a bed of roses, hence the need for a tripartite support mechanism to uphold it through good times and bad.
In the first half of the double bill, Yellow Things, nine mothers are played by three performers. Mothers Have Nine Lives is a series of shorts that observe a facet of motherhood across a timeline from pregnancy to the first flight of a cherished offspring in early adulthood.
Each episode covers an experience of child rearing so familiar that every one hits home in a way that parents can't help but enjoy, although carers of all types will be familiar with the stresses of going into battle with 'the system', keeping vulnerable charges safe and wanting the best for them.
Equally, the comedy scenes are relatable, and Becky Lumb shines as Kim, a mother chaotically negotiating her way to getting two children breakfasted and on the school bus with the right kit. This is a warmly touching, comic one-woman sitcom that had some in the audience hooting with laughter, as much with recognition as schadenfreude would be my guess.
Two extreme mothers are ripe for mocking. Workaholic career-woman Margaret, who sees her child at the weekends, is a comic monster and primary schooler Lesley, who falls asleep to subliminal Latin lessons, needs to be rescued from hot-housing mother Katherine, but writer Joanna Norland's comedy is not cruel, though it relies heavily on exaggeration to deliver laughs in its chosen abbreviated form.
It would be interesting to see how Norland approaches a longer format, but, for its part in this double bill, Mothers Have Nine Lives serves well enough as an entertaining amuse bouche, though it would have slipped down more smoothly without the superfluous voiceovers of children playing.
The second half's Yellow Wallpaper is the reworking of a turn of the 19th century short story as a contemporary look at a woman living with postnatal depression.
Lumb returns to deliver this half-hour monologue in a powerful and effecting performance as Woman.
Where she is confined is not clear, but deprived of the help Woman needs, her mental health declines, calibrated by the increasingly disturbing images haunting her from the wallpaper.
It is in periods of remission that her story emerges as she talks to her baby daughter, but as Woman pulls out of her depression, some contrivances are employed to create a defiantly feminist, uplifting conclusion.
This turnabout, and a suspect malevolent apparition, risk derailing what is otherwise a well-constructed, moving stage adaptation from Bridge House Theatre associate director Ellie Ward that soundly puts Woman in the 21st century, where her story is shared by the up to twenty percent of new mothers estimated to experience some form of mental ill health after childbirth.
Ward also directs both parts of the evening, demonstrating a good sense of space and pacing—she just needs to be alert to the distraction of garnish.