Never Not Once
Park Theatre

THE UK premiere of this award-winning US play by Carey Crim is a moving family drama about coming to terms with the past.

When college student Eleanor tells her two mothers that she has hired a private detective to find out who her father is, she sets in action a course of traumatic events that drags up the past and reshapes the future.

This feminist work with a racially mixed cast in the wake of the #MeToo movement definitely ticks all the boxes for being topical and like much US drama is easily accessible with clearly defined and differentiated characters wearing their emotions on their sleeves without any ambivalence.
 
Meaghan Martin gives a strong performance as the student set on finding out where the other half of her chromosomes came from despite her biological mother’s unwillingness to help while Gilbert Kyem Junior provides an amusing counter-balance to the family tensions as her easy-going, woke boyfriend helping with her determined quest.

Intelligently restrained, sympathetic performances by Flora Montgomery and Amanda Bright as the two professionally successful, articulate mothers supporting their daughter while dealing with the unspoken past are central to creating greater depth to this production and Adrian Grove’s emotional disintegration as the newly discovered father is effectively handled for a dramatically satisfying denouement.

Katherine Farmer intelligently directs this naturalistic play utilising stage proxemics in the intimate living room set to highlight the characters’ developing relationships.

At the end of the 90-minute show there is a cathartic sense of relief in a well performed, socially relevant and emotionally poignant production but at the same time there is a feeling we might have been manipulated by a writer set on highlighting issues rather than holding the mirror up to nature.

Runs until March 5, box office: parktheatre.co.uk