This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub: https://www.thereviewshub.com/son-of-a-bitch-southwark-playhouse-borough-london/
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Imagine the worst moment of your life was posted everywhere for the world to see. That’s the dilemma Marnie finds herself in when an expletive outburst towards her toddler on a flight goes viral in this funny and moving solo piece.
Anna Morris’ production, written and performed by herself, revolves around Marnie who struggles to get to grips with motherhood in the way everyone else expects her to. Marnie has long been a drifter before settling down with husband Jake and, after gruelling rounds of IVF, reluctantly becoming a mum to a typically terribly behaved toddler, Charlie. What starts as a piece which looks at the consequences, emotionally and socially, of going viral twists into an unflinching yet amusing piece about motherhood and the pressures upon women to be a mum.
Morris’s performance blends the silliness with the serious well. The back and forth in Morris’ script, flashing back and flashing forward around the viral incident, while also dropping us into her flight from hell, allows us to see a mother on the edge, as toddler Charlie develops a typically terrorising toddler personality. We see Marnie at her best, enjoying her carefree lifestyle before marriage and childbirth, and at her lowest, ostracised by the mums at the school gate because of her sweary outburst.
It explores the expectant pressures placed upon women in society to be pregnant and enjoy it, and questions society’s reluctance to support those who either choose not to have children, or those that struggle with them. While the moment she labels her son the worst of all the four-letter words is quite funny, and almost certainly something most parents have had the temptation to do, the build-up and consequences of this moment, which whizzes around the world, are more serious, and Morris does well to blend these across the piece.
At just an hour long, Son of a Bitch packs a lot into it. Morris’ vocal skill allows her to portray an abundance of characters who impact Marnie’s life, from her sweet yet pushy Mum, her dim and goofy father and her increasingly distant husband right through to her posh friend and clinical IVF consultant. It is this switch in characters that maintains the production’s pace and pushes Morris’ skill to the fore.
There are lots of fun moments. The hysterical responses online to Marnie’s actions are recognisable to anyone who has seen a post go viral, and Morris sends this up well in her script. Morris’s portrayal of Marnie’s Dad, while a little two-dimensional, works well to lighten moments of tension. This is balanced by a couple of moments which elicit, maybe a little melodramatically, some shocked gasps from the audience, though these twists are well-thought-out and as well-placed as a strong punchline.
It is a piece with minimal set, a carpet laid out to mimic the aisle where Marnie’s lowest moment happened thousands of feet high. Despite its minimalism, there is plenty to think about in this piece. Morris’ production forces us to question society’s responses to pregnancy. The incessant positivity that revolves around it can ostracise those swept up in it, even expectant, but perhaps reluctant, mothers.
Morris poses some interesting questions about motherhood, and this is a raw and unflinching piece that seamlessly blends humour and horror as Marnie’s world tears apart, for the world to see, in just ten seconds.
