As previews begin tonight (20 March 2019) for the world premiere of Maud Dromgoole’s Mary’s Babies, at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre, sneak a peek inside the rehearsal room with stars Katy Stephens and Emma Fielding, who play 41 parts between them. Respect! Time to get booking!
Mary Barton, a pioneer of fertility treatment, thought her husband was perfect. And doesn’t every child deserve the perfect father? So Mary used her husband’s sperm to impregnate up to a thousand women, and then burnt all the records. A thousand resulting children, the ‘Barton Brood’, with no idea about their shared father. Meeting each other. Making friends. Having babies.
Emma Fielding and Katy Stephens star in Mary’s Babies, a fictional tale inspired by the true story of Mary Barton and the Barton Brood. Provocative, comic, and compelling, Maud Dromgoole‘s new play imagines a series of encounters between these unknowing half-siblings.
Mary’s Babies reunites playwright Maud Dromgoole and director Tatty Hennessy after their 2016 success with Acorn, at the Courtyard Theatre. A co-production with Oak Theatre, Mary’s Babies has set and costume by Anna Reid, lighting by Jai Morjaria, sound by Yvonne Gilbert and casting by Matilda James.
Mary’s Babies is part of Jermyn Street’s Portraits Season, celebrating the venue’s 25th birthday as an independent theatre in the heart of the West End.
Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This work has not been authorised by the estates of Mary Barton or Bertold Wiesner or any of their beneficiaries, family members, relatives or other representatives.
Rehearsal photos
What did the company get up to during rehearsals at London’s Jerwood Space?
More Portraits
Mary’s Babies has been just one of the productions rehearsing this month at Jerwood Space. The company of the next offering in the theatre’s Portraits season – Howard Brenton’s return adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie running alongside a new adaptation of Strindberg’s Creditors (25 April to 1 June) has also been rehearsing for its pre-Jermyn Street season at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick. The doubling up gave playwright Maud Dromgoole an opportunity to confer with Brenton.
Howard Brenton & Maud Dromgoole
