Writer: Doug Deans
Director: Kathleen O’Dougherty
Doug Deans muses on the challenges and rewards of parenthood in his thought-provoking, deftly paced, and tremendously performed interwoven twin monologue, Mother.Dad.
Her (Toyin Ayedun-Alase) is an urban, 30-something single mum who works as a chucker-out in a run-down local pub. Assailed and bloodied by a drunken, brick-wielding pregnant woman on a Thursday night hen-night, she takes a moment to reflect on 17 years as a parent to a sparky daughter whom she loves but does not necessarily always like. If she could “go back to the past and nudge it in another direction”, would she?
Through a series of flashbacks, we see the woman’s first meet-cute with her offspring’s philandering father, and her shock at finding out she is pregnant (“a stone in my stomach pulling me down”) at a time when her GCSEs are on the horizon and “I’ve still got a bedtime”. Inevitably, we see the protracted failure of the young duo’s relationship. Abandoned and resentful at having to “read the Hungry Caterpillar to a parasite”, she finds unexpected reward in a career as a bouncer.
He (Andy Sellers) is a similarly aged, struggling father of young twins with anger management issues, a corrodingly critical inner voice, and a much more successful wife. Over the course of an afternoon, we see him cogitating over incipient grey hairs, a growing wine belly, and resentment at succumbing to “the purgatory of middle-class life”. He claims he is “the most present I’ve ever been,” but beneath the surface lies rage, which finds expression in a bust-up with other parents at the after-school pick-up. When the man’s wife fails to return home from work that evening, anger turns swiftly to visceral fear.
The twin stories run in parallel, shifting from one perspective to another with a well-judged eye on theme and pacing. What both characters share is a feeling of inadequacy (even failure) as parents, and resentment at being thrown into their roles seemingly unasked and unprepared. Philip Larkin famously said, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. Deans’s point, expressed in pithy, measured writing and restrained direction from Kathleen O’Dougherty, seems to be that having kids threatens to do the same. A well-camouflaged final-act twist brings the twin storylines together into an unexpectedly satisfying, unified narrative.
Sellers is excellent at communicating the quiet despair beneath the façade of an apparently successful rural marriage. One inevitably finds more empathy with Ayedun-Alase’s courageous bouncer: the brick she gets shoved in her face at the pub is perhaps a metaphor for the challenges faced by many working-class single parents.
Runs until 31 January 2026
