Good on stage, but better on radio?
If there were an award for “best script-in-hand performance” 2017, a strong candidate would have to be Jonathan Mcguinness. He was recruited to the cast of Vivienne Franzmann’s new play little more than 24 hours before the opening night – owing to the sudden indisposition of the male lead, Brian Ferguson.
Given that the piece trades on heightened emotions as well as complex ethics – a British couple are so desperate for a child that they pay for a surrogate mother in India, with a donor egg supplied from Russia – it’s impressive that Mcguinness is already managing to invest the character of Josh with the kind of lived-in qualities essential to basic plausibility.
And yet the glaring presence of that glanced-at script inadvertently makes you wonder if Bodies is a perfect fit for the stage. I think it might work better on radio. It has to range between “developed” and “developing” countries; Josh and his wife Clem’s home; the living-room in which Clem’s father (afflicted by motor neurone disease) is tended to by his carer; and a fertility clinic in India. With its ungainly window-doors, sidelined nursery area and odd little screen for womby projections, the design of Jude Christian’s production leaves room for improvement. More than that, though, this play roams far beyond naturalism by taking us inside Clem’s mind.
In a stroke that initially makes you think that you’re watching a mother angsting about empty-nest syndrome, Franzmann bodies-forth the unborn child as a confident teenager who chats to and goads her “mum”.
With Clem’s disapproving father also sowing seeds of doubt, the play brings to term a crisis of anxiety as to who this “trans-national” offspring belongs to and the unseen human cost of this mother of all transactions.
Justine Mitchell does a brilliant job taking us on a journey from forced brightness and composure to tearyeyed hysteria, conveying Clem’s desolation at being excluded from the “mum club” and gestating gut feeling of paranoia about the impoverished stranger – so seemingly subservient on Skype – at the other end of this brave-new-world chain.
Hannah Rae is also fantastically assured as the daughter she’s always dreamed of, taunting and haunting her with more nightmarish outcomes. The play confirms the seriousness of intent that Franzmann, a former teacher, displayed with her debut Mogadishu in 2011, but at an early scan someone should perhaps have detected that her precious bundle would be more securely delivered in an airier medium.
Until Aug 12. Tickets: 020 7565 5000; royalcourttheatre.com