Theatre review: With Child, Pleasance Courtyard - The Cellar, Edinburgh
With Child, Pleasance Courtyard – The Cellar * * *
Despite each of the characters she plays being visibly pregnant, they rarely refer to this and instead deliver short Alan Bennett-style monologues on the various other things that preoccupy them.
There’s a straight-talking Londoner with strong views on swimming pool etiquette, a down-to-earth northern lass who can’t look at her “very attractive” husband because she’s “bored of his face,” and a woman whose petty sniping escalates to a point where she feels she’s being “penalised for being British.”
Their voices often share a similarly critical perspective, the play’s implied message being: if you don’t want to be judged, stop judging.
Pointing’s an engaging comic performer who creates lovely self-contained character studies without bringing them together in a single story.
However, the pieces thematically connect to call for a less spiteful world in which women support rather than critique one another, whether in relation to having children or anything else.
SALLY STOTT
Ends tomorrow