Facing up to it

Backstroke, a new play by Anna Mackmin at the Donmar is a bit of a mixed bag but the cast including Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig was a very good reason to take a look.

The play opens with Beth (Celia Imrie) in a hospital bed and Bo (Tamsin Grieg) her middle aged and flustered daughter trying to deal with hospital staff whilst following her mother’s wishes and at the same time, manage, long distance, a crisis with her own daughter.  At first I thought this might be a dementia and death play, and to a certain extent it is, but very quickly the play starts to jump backwards and forwards in time, seeming randomly, each scene exploring more of the difficult relationship between the two women. In the first half we have learnt that Beth is not an ideal mother. In the second half though it becomes clear that this is a more nuanced story about mothers and daughters.  We begin to see a more rounded picture, and that Beth and Bo have had moments of joy, closeness and mutual support mixed in with the angst. The ending might be a bit cheesy but it worked.

At the interval we were mulling over the uneven tone and that it didn’t really seem to get going.  Some people seem to have given up at that stage and didn’t come back for the second half and I understand why although I think it was a mistake. I thoroughly enjoyed the sweariness of Celia Imrie's Beth, and it looked like she was enjoying it too.  Tamsin Greig does frazzled so well, her role could have been made for her.  As both are such accomplished comedy performers I expected it to be funnier than it was; there was lots of potential for laughs but somehow they rarely landed. Maybe Anna Mackmin directing as well as writing was the mistake here - a little bit of distance might have helped. It could certainly do with a bit of editing and maybe restructuring of some of the scenes but, after the interval, things did begin to coalesce and reach a satisfying and moving (if slightly simplistic) ending.  

Earlier in the day we had popped into the The Face retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, and it was a real treat, packed with images from the early days as an edgy start up, through its fashion, music and celebrity fuelled glory days, a cultural canary that chronicled the zeitgeist but sometimes defined it instead with with its striking and innovative photography and visual style.  I also remembered the great articles too, a mixture of art, music, fashion, politics and general cultural debate, which meant that it was hard to stay siloed, something we have lost since the digital age with its algorithms dawned.  I have a hankering to sit down and re-read some of them.  

There was a little reminder there too, that the Thatcher years in some ways helped to create the cultural boom in the 80s and 90's, partly through oppositional politics, but also through the funding that was available for entrepreneurial youth - if they could find £1000, the government would match it and pay a weekly salary, funding many of the photographers and other artists we can see in this exhibition - I suspect it was an unintended consequence but a good one.  

We had our own little journey down memory lane, and it was entertaining listening to the other conversations around us, many of them digging into their own memories.  But, I was pleased to see plenty of younger people who weren’t even born in time for The Face’s heyday, taking plenty of photos and spending almost as long there as we did.  Honestly, this is great.  It’s a bit pricey but definitely worth it, like the magazine itself.