29 May – 7 June 2025
by Charlotte Keatley
Set in Manchester, Oldham and London, My Mother Said I Never Should is a poignant, bittersweet story about love, jealousy and the price of freedom.
The play details the lives of four women through the immense social changes of the 20th century. Using a kaleidoscopic time structure, Charlotte Keatley’s story focuses on four generations of one family as they confront the most significant moments of their lives.
In 1940, Doris, a former teacher, encourages her nine-year-old daughter, Margaret, to mind her manners and practise the piano. In 1969, Margaret’s relationship with her own daughter is strained, as art student Jackie experiments with her new found sexual freedom. When Jackie becomes pregnant at 18 and has baby Rosie, a decision is made that will affect all their lives irrevocably.
Cast
Doris Partington | Helen Dunford-Hearn
Margaret Bradley | Sally Bosman
Jackie Metcalfe | Elke Desanghere
Rosie Metcalfe | Sophie Moss
Directed by Hannah Millsted-Bowdery
Photography by Gail Bishop
Review | June 2025 | Theo Spring
The demands on the four actors in this production were extraordinary. To be young children, teenagers, a baby, mothers, a grandmother, an artist, a businesswoman – the list goes on, but they all came up to the mark, helping to tell this quite complicated and intricate tale of a family and their slowly revealed secrets.
Adults being very young children opened the play and began the many changes of characters and the many different time settings which moved around out of sequence, leading the story backwards and forwards. Although the dates of the scenes were clearly set out in the programme it was a clever and appreciated aid to bring in music and songs to relevant to the timescale. If my memory serves, Helen Shapero’s Please Don’t Treat Me Like a Child was a particularly apt introduction to the scene with a stroppy teenager.
The use of the revolve allowed the audience to associate the set with different homes, but even these varied over the time period.
The matriarch of the family is Doris Partington with Helen Dunford-Hearn having to transform herself from a thumb-sucking child of 4 to a grandmother of 87, with many of the ages in between. A big acting ask, but one she achieved seamlessly, carrying much of the story forward. Achieving both initial severity with her daughter’s upbringing she also delivered one of the play’s best throw-away lines after the death of her husband, saying that she and her husband were married for 61 years but didn’t really like each other much.
Sally Bosman was Margaret – again a child but also Doris’ daughter who went on to have her own daughter Jackie who went on to have her own daughter Rosie! So many complicated relationships were explored and Sally had to become many people, outstanding in her scene, on her own, at the hospital.
To Elke Desanghere fell the role of Jackie, again of a bouncy and quite bossy child, but as that stroppy teen she became an unmarried mother and the moving roller-coaster began. Her character transformations were very demanding and well achieved with so many different kinds of emotions to present.
Sophie Moss completed the quartet, mainly as Rosie – Jackie’s daughter, whom we watched growing up from a baby to a caring and enthusiastic fifteen-year-old. Thoroughly at ease in this role she added animated realism, notably in Act III when the story became more centred.
If concentration was certainly required by the audience, for the cast there was so much to achieve, from character transformations, different ‘venues’ and quick costumes changes. They did all of this and more, realistically creating a house clearance which moved from a littered stage to a cleared one, ready for the next scene.
Set design was by Martin Swain with clever use of the revolve and even including a swing on stage. Wardrobe by Berry Butler brought more realism to the changing periods. Lighting by Jono Mash again enhanced the period feel. Sound by Mike Millsted was right on cue.
Taking on the challenge of a play with so many facets, written by Charlotte Keatley, Hannah Millsted-Bowdery directed with skill and understanding, bringing such a complex play to life, assisted by a more than excellent cast.