My Mother Said I Never Should - Maureen Lipman and Katie Brayben star
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
KATIE Brayben (as Jackie) and Maureen Lipman (Doris) will lead the cast in the first London staging in over 25 years of My Mother Said I Never Should, which runs at St James Theatre from April 13 to May 21, 2016.
I don’t know if you’ll ever love me as much as I love you but one day you’ll understand why I’ve done this to you.
Doris, born illegitimate in 1900, exchanges her budding teaching career for marriage and motherhood. When the war is over, her daughter Margaret marries an American and has Jackie, who becomes an archetypal 60s rebel. When Jackie can’t face being a single mother, it is decided that baby Rosie will be brought up as Margaret’s own. That’s the plan anyway…
Charlotte Keatley’s award-winning play is a moving exploration of the relationships between mothers and daughters and the consequences of breaking the most sacred taboo of motherhood. It’s a play about the choices we make which determine the course of our lives and how it is never too late to change.
Maureen Lipman’s extensive theatre credits include Harvey and Daytona (Theatre Royal Haymarket), When We Are Married (Garrick Theatre), A Little Night Music (Menier Chocolate Factory/West End), Aladdin (Old Vic), Old Money and Peggy For You (Hampstead Theatre) and Re-Joyce (West End/national tour/USA).
She has also appeared many times at the National Theatre – in Oklahoma!, Macbeth, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Jumpers, The Front Page and School for Scandal.
Her screen work includes Ladies of Letters, Skins, He Kills Coppers, Sensitive Skin, About Face, All at No. 20, Agony, Cold Enough for Snow and Eskimo Day (TV); Bridge of Lies, Flight of Fancy, The Pianist, Carry on Columbus, Educating Rita and Gumshoe (film).
Singer-songwriter Katie Brayben was last seen playing Carole King in Beautiful at the Aldwych Theatre. Her other theatre credits include Princess Diana in King Charles III (Wyndham’s Theatre), American Psycho: A new musical thriller (Almeida Theatre), Joking Apart (Nottingham Playhouse), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Ragtime (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), 13 (National Theatre), Company (Southwark Playhouse), Return to the Forbidden Planet (on tour in the UK) and Mamma Mia! (West End and on tour internationally).
Brayben’s screen credits include Vera and This Way Out.
Lipman and Brayben will be joined in the cast of My Mother Said I Never Should by Caroline Faber (The Taming of the Shrew, The Heiress) as Margaret and Serena Manteghi (The Railway Children) as Rosie.
The production will be directed by Paul Robinson and designed by Signe Beckmann, with lighting by Johanna Town, sound and musical composition by Simon Slater, video design by Timothy Bird, costume design by Helen Coyston and movement direction by Lucy Cullingford.
Also at St James Theatre: the new musical comedy Miss Atomic Bomb (March 7 to April 9) and a new production of Rex Pickett’s critically acclaimed and much loved novel and play, Sideways (May 26 to July 9, 2016).