by Joanna Murray-Smith
Directed by Nicolette Kay. Designed by Alex Marker. Lighting by Tom White. Music by Dimitar Pentchev. Sound by Crispin Anderson. Presented by Muzikansky.
Cast includes: Charlotte Lucas. Kristin Milward.

[ new year, new plays season ]
The London premiere of a new play by the author of Honour

20 February – 17 March 2007

"If you were really so concerned about the world women inherited, you would have held onto the one woman you brought into this world. You would have helped her inherit it."

Faced with being an unmarried teenage mother, Anna gave up her only child in an action she has since tried to erase from her memory. Now a successful, forty-something film editor, Anna lives a perfect life alone in a sterile apartment, until a young woman called Billie arrives at her door. Billie acts in soap operas and is searching for her birth mother…

A compelling and poetic drama exploring the delicate reconciliation between a mother and the daughter she gave up at birth. Together, these two fragmented women confront their differences: between then and now, between generations, and between the one who gave away and the one who was given away.

Joanna Murray-Smith is one of Australia's most successful playwrights - as well as a screenwriter and novelist. Her plays include Honour, Rapture, Bombshells, Nightfall, Redemption and Flame have been produced around the world. Honour has been produced in over two dozen countries including productions on Broadway, at the National Theatre with Eileen Atkins and the West End with Diana Rigg and Martin Jarvis. Both Honour and Rapture won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Best Play. Joanna is the author of two published novels, Truce and Judgement Rock.

Directed by Nicolette Kay, Artistic Director of Muzikansky, whose previous credits include Mary Stuart (Time Out Critics’ Choice) - “Excellent performances and some stunning moments of violence...” The Independent; “Fascinating” Time Out; “Nicolette Kay directs the often exhilarating proceedings…a production of character.” The Guardian; The Dreams of Clytemnestra and Mela (BAC) and The B3 Team (Lyric Studio, Hammersmith). She also co-translated Mary Stuart which was subsequently published and has been continuously performed in the English speaking world.

The cast includes Kristin Milward whose extensive credits include the original production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Royal Shakespeare Company, West End and Broadway), Vanity/Onegin (Young Vic), Plunder (National Theatre), The Illustrious Corpse (Leicester Haymarket and Soho Theatre) and many productions with Howard Barker’s The Wrestling School. Charlotte Lucas trained at RADA. Her theatre credits include Darfur : How Long Is Never? (Tricycle), Fabulation (Tricycle), A Thought In Three Parts (BAC) and Fen ( Salisbury Playhouse). She is best known for her regular role as Selena Geeson on TV's Bad Girls.

The Press on Previous Productions of Love Child
“An absorbing, emotionally powerful drama of confrontation.' The Australian
“A powerful, richly textured modern drama that is gripping from start to finish.' Sunday Herald-Sun
“This is a concentrated, intense, often poetic one-act play.” The Sunday Age
“Joanna Murray-Smith continues to write plays that are justifiably finding productions in the United States and Britain. The quality of her work ... transcends national boundaries in its acute exploration of the psychological states that determine social outcomes.” The Age

The Press on Love Child

**** Four Stars, Evening Standard

“This sensitively handled, beautifully calibrated chamber piece...Highly recommended.”” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“A fine production...This is another valuable Finborough addition to the London repertoire.” Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate

“The last time I cried at the theatre was ten years ago at the National, when poor mad Lear stooped over the body of his youngest daughter. That is till last night, when – on a tiny stage above a pub in Earl's Court – a line was delivered with such poignancy and tenderness my eyes flooded with tears.” Music OmH

“This production contrives somehow to get everything right.” Music OmH

“If ‘Fringe’ carries negative connotations in quality (as opposed to enterprise and innovation) terms then this isn’t Fringe. Kay’s direction sculpts all the script’s mood-shifts, the awkward uncertainties, disappointments and hopeful conversational sallies.“ Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate

“Nicolette Kay’s production is sensitive and well paced” Sam Marlowe, The Times

“Splendidly played in Nicolette Kay’s Finborough production, the play’s London premiere.” Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate

“Committed performances from Charlotte Lucas and Kristin Milward”
Kieron Quirke, Time Out

“Two fine performances in Nicolette Kay's gripping but measured production.” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“The performances, by Charlotte Lucas as Billie and Kristin Milward as Anna, are faultless.” Sam Marlowe, The Times

“Two impeccable performances, Charlotte Lucas giving Billie the happy facility of someone who expects to be recognised on a doorstep, Kristin Milward’s Anna more self-conscious and aware of the modifications she has to make towards the new arrival in her life.” Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate

“Charlotte Lucas expresses a marvelous mix of vulnerability and affection, livened with a pleasing tendency to fly into anger” Music OmH

“Kristin Milwood's performance was one of the best I've seen in recent years.”
Music OmH

“The moment of revelation is one to savour” Kieron Quirke, Time Out

“Murray-Smith is one of Australia's most respected writers, both as novelist and playwright, is evident throughout. The dialogue skilfully weaves the mundane with painful moments of revelation and self-examination, and is spiked with flashes of humour.” Music OmH

“The past actions and present standpoints of the women are compellingly examined by Murray-Smith” Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith’s best-known in Britain for Honour, which succeeded wildly in the Cottesloe and did respectably in a (different) West End production. Its marital tensions translate into generational terms in this shorter play, explored through cultural assumptions.”
Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate

“If there is one thing Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith understands, it is the shifting dynamics of a close relationship.”
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

“Politics and feminism, from Anna’s Sixties radicalism to Billie’s woollier modernity, are examined through the fractured prism of a relationship that has only ever existed inside the two women’s imaginations.” Sam Marlowe, The Times

“This is not just a play about mothers and daughters. Without seeming to do so – and certainly without the aggravating preachiness of 'issue' plays – it invites an examination of the political and social ideologies that separate two generations of women.” Music OmH

“Murray-Smith adroitly conveys the unmet demands and the disappointments, the cruelties and comforts of mother-daughter connection” Sam Marlowe, The Times

“Love Child deserves a transfer to a bigger venue but life is rarely so just – catch this small gem of a production while you can.” Music OmH

“Alex Marker’s cool, minimalist set, a room in Anna’s London home, sits elegantly in the Finborough’s tiny space.” Heather Neill, The Stage

“Alex Marker’s set, from floor to tasteful designer accoutrements, could grace any stage.” Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate