Reviews
The Financial Times
Ian Shuttleworth
“As with last year’s Haunted Child , Penhall allows us to put the pieces together as we please. Ninety minutes of entertainment or deceptive think-piece, it’s still a healthy, bouncing bundle.”
01/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Independent
Paul Taylor
“There’s nothing like role-reversal drama for revealing the double standards and injustices that we accept as perfectly natural and the switch at the centre of this often hilarious and provocative play is wonderfully fertile, so to speak, in that regard. It’s a tribute to Penhall that you sit there wondering why no one has thought of putting it centre stage before. ”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Independent on Sunday
Holly Williams
“Penhall mocks his own sex knowingly, however, and a passage where Ed recalls watching his wife being "mutilated" during labour feels close to the bone. A dim view of the NHS, where "a football team of nurses" can't even unfold the operating table , also sounds carved from experience. The lethargic, unpopular, unbiddable midwife, Joyce, is brilliantly drawn, Llewella Gideon giving a wincingly recognisable performance.”
01/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Stage
Mark Shenton
“All the pain, after all, has a miraculous pay-off. A birth of a play can be similarly tortuous, and this one has a great pay-off in the opportunity it proves for a pair of really lovely, tender yet tough performances from Mangan and Dillon. As directed by Roger Michell, they capture beautifully the range of emotions from impatience and pain to terror and joy that the experience entails.”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish
“It’s undoubtedly Mangan’s night in Roger Michell’s stark, stylish and briskly efficient production. A blissful comic actor, he hits every note of petulance, panic and self-pity dead on, sucking on the gas-and-air like a helpless child needing its dummy, but he also nurtures a body of deep emotion that swells to a pregnant pitch of anguish and recrimination as the evening rises to an exhausted peak. If you’ve been there, you’ll love this. If you’re pondering parenthood, my god will it give you pause.”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
Time Out
Rachel Halliburton
“A compelling evening and - in a week where an NHS spokesperson has admitted that childbirth is a 'problem area' - almost as traumatic as going through the real thing.”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Times
Libby Purves
“It goes on about NHS inefficiency; and a further interesting and underdeveloped strand hints at the modern horror of raw biology, combined with a strident sense of rights. “I am entitled to harvest my own wife’s ovaries!” cries Ed; yet later he delivers a furious (very contraceptive) riff about his earlier ordeal watching Lisa’s delivery ... Oh, see a shrink, dear, do!”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Maxie Szakwinska
“This role-reversal comedy isn’t only about male panic: women are almost as likely to break into a flop sweat watching Roger Michell’s dexterously directed production. It rather resembles the experience of pregnancy itself, in that you frequently find yourself wondering, “Why am I enduring this when I don’t have to?” There’s a moment when a nurse picks up an instrument called an “amni-hook” that made me want to reach for the nitrous oxide. By the end of the evening, however, Penhall ensures that you (just about) know why you’ve put yourself through the indignity and discomfort.”
08/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Michael Billington
“Penhall is writing much more than a "what-if" play in which the gender-roles are transposed. On the one hand, he suggests the Guardian-reading, middle-class Ed and Lisa treat the hospital staff, especially the African midwife, with an arrogant impatience verging on racial contempt. At the same time, Penhall portrays the NHS as clogged-up and inefficient with patients left for hours without information, pain-killing drugs or proper medical attention. While I'm always happy to see white liberals given a going-over, I was perturbed by the play's portrait of the NHS. I suspect Penhall's intention is to suggest that a vital service is being sabotaged by inadequate funding but, as it stands, his play could easily be taken as a persuasive plug for private health care.”
01/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“Penhall writes amusingly about attitudes to childbirth: the differing views of men and women, and also the range of approaches you find among healthcare professionals. The reversal of familiar gender roles is a source of laughs - and a few moments of pathos. When Ed tells Lisa she doesn’t understand his pain, we know that of course she does. But it’s not clear whether Penhall is making a point about Ed’s solipsism or the self-obsession of men in general.”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Observer
Susannah Clapp
“A comic exploration seems about to take place. Penhall muffs it. Not that he fails to deliver nifty one-liners. "It's a man's world, gynaecology," snaps Louise Brealey as a frighteningly convincing registrar. Not that he flinches from squelchy moments: was it the catheters, the snapping on of latex gloves or the idea of someone about to go into labour with an erection that caused a couple to exit on press night? No, the trouble is that an idea brimming with possibilities is left undeveloped. This is becoming the Penhall problem. ”
01/07/2012
Read Full Review