RashDash’s new present opens with mess. Nappies and toys and cups and pillows and numerous plastic balls. It spills out throughout the stage, defying any try at order. Helen and Abbi would quite every thing was tidy and gleaming. However that is what they need to work with.
Oh Mom carves which means out of the litter and chaos of early parenthood. The challenge began greater than two years in the past, meant as a dialog between the theatre-makers and their moms. It arrives on stage a pandemic and two infants later. Now moms themselves, RashDash’s Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland – performing alongside musician and co-deviser Simone Seales – layer their new experiences on to the ladies who raised them. The result's a richly textured collage of affection, fear, pleasure and sleepless nights.
RashDash discover a distinctive theatrical vocabulary for the life-altering occasion that's turning into a father or mother. The present is kaleidoscopic in focus, lurching feverishly from one scene to the following. This feels just like the dramaturgy of motherhood – a sequence of interrupted moments, seen by way of the distorting lens of sleep deprivation. The corporate’s attribute motion and music have additionally been reborn. Helen and Abbi’s our bodies transfer by way of the playful choreography of infancy: crawling, reaching, exploring. Becky Wilkie’s compositions are laced with nursery rhyme themes, whereas Seales’ versatile cello soundtrack swerves from hovering heights to thrumming anxiousness.
However it’s not only a present for moms, or those that suppose they could wish to be moms. RashDash take a look at caring in its many varieties, whether or not for individuals who have simply entered life or for these approaching its finish. And in brief, usually humorous vignettes, the corporate touches on a number of attitudes in direction of motherhood, from the ambivalent to the contentedly child-free. All that is framed by the societal pressures of gendered roles and expectations, which show onerous to shake off even for fogeys who're dedicated to equality.
Oh Mom runs the danger of collapsing below the burden of every thing it’s making an attempt to discover – a criticism that the present itself wittily anticipates. However finally it thrives within the mess and complexity that's making a household, no matter that will appear to be.
Oh Mom is at Dwelling, Manchester, till 28 Could, then touring till 13 August.
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