My Mother Said I Never Should (Student Editions)

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In a common situation, too-young, unready, motherhood not coped with, the child was surrendered back to Jackie’s own mother. As the play moves between scenes of childish imagination and the reality of adulthood, we see how often the protagonists’ ambitions shrink over time.

It is a play which, for all its heartrendingly bleak moments, finished on an optimistic note; the underlying care and love which each generation of women had for the others finally made it to the surface. It is also about how the different generations break free from their parent's traditions and culture. They experience frustration, tragedy, misunderstanding and the whole gamut of unexpected or unplanned for occurrences that life naturally throws at us. So, we’ve had to come up with a solution, being it’s Lisa who actually plays an extra character who we have created, who’s the neighbour’s daughter dressed as a girl guide.his play is about the diicult relationships between mothers and daughters and eplores the themes o independence2 growing up and secrets. London Classic Theatre produced the play in their first year of production and so this national tour eighteen years on is Artistic Director Michael Cabot’s second go at staging the acclaimed play. A: Charlotte Keatley Pf: 1987, Manchester Pb: 1988 G: Drama in 3 acts S: Manchester, Oldham, and London, 1940–87 C: 4fThe play focuses on four generations of mothers and daughters: Doris Partington, born 1900; Margaret Bradley; born 1931; Jackie Metcalfe, born 1952; Rosie Metcalfe, born 1971.

It is, at the end of the day, a set of circumstances which is instantly recognisable as normal family life and the "ordinariness" of it will strike a chord with the audience. Charlotte Keatley’s play, first seen at the Contact Manchester in 1987 when she was in her mid-20s, was a big success that acted as a spur to other female dramatists. Set mainly in Manchester, the play begins with the four actors as schoolgirls tripping around a playground, innocently planning to kill their mothers. The ways in which they mirror one another, even whilst trying to break away, are clear, and we see repeated a longing to be different coexisting with a desire to connect.

Told in flashbacks, episodes in different time and place, the play jumps around whilst retaining the connection of the women through a set of surreal ‘Wasteland’ scenes where all three women are unified as their child selves, playing together and enacting their childhood simultaneously.

A car tyre becomes a swing, corrugated metal and wooden crates becomes a piano as well as simply being a wasteland for some parts. ollowing its publication in 19882 it has been studied as an A;le%el set tet or a number o years and has subseuently been translated into "" languages. The set was one of the wasteland of objects from the women’s lives with a fence structure and the scenes were set within this setting. The set design (Dee Harvey) deserves acclaim too – a mass of clutter behind all the action – how appropriate as a representation of these lives! The play was revised for a successful run at the Royal Court Theatre in 1989, and in 1990 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Most Promising Newcomer Award.D o r i s P a r t i n g t o n ( D e i r d r e D o o n e ) , b o r n i l l e g i t i m a t e i n 1 9 0 0 , a b a n d o n s h e r p r o m i si n g t e a ch i n g ca r e e r f or m ar r i ag e an d m ot he r h oo d i n 19 24 . During the clearing of a site for travellers Councillor Knox was seriously assaulted leaving him blind in one eye and with a punctured lung - both permanent injuries. She grows from rebellious teenage hippie to desperate single mother to respected artist, and her scenes with Rebecca Birch’s Rosie are hugely poignant.

Lilian Jones flawlessly embodied the ‘in my day’ Grandma figure, capturing Doris’ internal conflict between the expectation of familial devotion and the simultaneous recognition of the experiences she had missed out on.Keatley’s play follows four generations of women in the same family over half a century, tracing the different opportunities and compromises available to its female characters. She was able to maintain the simplicity, innocence and fervour of youth within the above tense environment. I’d actually most like to play Doris, I think I have a very old northern woman inside me – how else could I have written all this age 25? Spanning 1940 to 1987, though in non-linear fashion, the play traces the complex relationships of mothers and daughters. Mary Campbell (as Margaret Bradley) represented the next generation, first as the emotionally neglected child and then as wife and mother.