Writer Katie Redford
Director: Rob Watt
Mother and daughter are on holiday in Scarborough. Lorna is 32: Mila is 16. They’re not alone either. Mila has brought along her grandmother’s ashes, sealed in a sandwich bag for safety. Katie Redford’s play doesn’t tell us anything new about mother/daughter relationships but the acting of the two leads elevates the story into one that is moving and sincere.
Lorna doesn’t feel like a parent. She’s still young and therefore has planned a weekend of cocktails and a fancy restaurant that she can hardly afford. She tries to persuade her daughter to have a couple of shots as if Mila is one of the girls. Lorna doesn’t get out much. The girls she used to run about with back in Sheffield are all having babies, posting up their perfect lives on Insta.
Mila is a little sulky, glued to her phone and the messages she’s getting from her friends who have gone to London to celebrate their GCSE results. Mila has her exam results too but mysteriously won’t reveal them to her mother. She’s dealing with other issues too: climate change; body dysmorphia; boyfriend troubles.
For a 60-minute play, perhaps Mila has too many issues. None of them has time to breathe, but it’s a brave move by Redford to try and present a real teenager of the 21st Century, coping with more than just exam results. And Olivia Pentelow, in her professional stage debut, plays Mila beautifully, her sullen demeanour only occasionally broken when they go to the arcade to play Dance Dance Revolution games. It’s impossible not to believe in her character, who has become the parent in the relationship despite her young age.
Lorna may not be the best mother, but she does the best she can. Eleanor Henderson is utterly convincing as a woman trying to hang onto her youth, feeling like she’s missed out on experiences. She’s a bit stuck in the era before #MeToo, giving her daughter poor advice on how she should entice her boyfriend back. But these suggestions and other declarations such as the fact that she enjoys being catcalled by men never turn her into a grotesque figure. She feels entirely human.
Bethany Wells’ stage design of a few platforms and TVs showing disjointed images of Homes Under the Hammer or videos of happier times on the beach are all the two actors need to bring home their poignant story. Wish You Weren’t Here demonstrates how close family members don’t know each other at all and yet how their lives are inextricably linked forever.
Runs until 2 March 2024
