Mess and muddle are everywhere in Amelia Bullmore’s debut play. The kitchen where it’s set is a crazy clutter of toys, washing, ironing and fridge magnets. The children are spilling the milk, demanding cuddles and asking awkward questions about hairy fannies as Mum tries to get them dressed for primary school. But this is benign, everyday mess compared with what ensues when Dad returns from a trip out of town. Marital problems enter the domestic equation and, with it, serious confusion.
It’s easy to see why Mammals received excellent reviews when it was staged, then as now by Anna Mackmin, at the Bush last April. True, it’s not exactly original. Aside from the device that requires little Jess and smaller Betty to be played by adults with a gift for parodying the clatter and hubbub of childhood, we’ve been here often before. But Bullmore treats edgy, troubled relationships with wit and wisdom as well as with the carpentry-shop skills one expects of someone who learnt her craft on This Life and other television dramas.
Niamh Cusack and Daniel Ryan are Jane and Kev, mother and father and, for now, wife and husband. It’s when he apologetically tells her that he’s in love with a colleague at work, which is inspecting buildings for safety, that their prospects become worrying. She feels he’s had the freedom and the fun while she’s had the kitchen and the kids. And the emotional outlook isn’t improved when she reveals she once fell for Mark Bonnar’s Phil, who happens to be Kev’s best friend and has just come for a visit with the latest of a series of lady loves, Anna Chancellor’s Lorna.
Considering Chancellor’s talent, Lorna isn’t much of a part. All that’s required of her is to be the cool, uncaring narcissist who privately disdains Phil and seems to regard Jane’s children as space aliens who have just popped out of John Hurt’s chest. It’s the others who have the interesting conflicts and challenges. All meet them splendidly, especially Cusack, all harassed outrage as she begins to reassess and maybe recant a marriage apparently spent in the self-sacrificial, sub-Stepford style of Terry Martin Hekker, the American author of Disregard Last Book.
But this is no feminist tract or protest play. Rather it’s a warm-hearted comedy that gently mourns the fact that, as Kev says wanly, we’re “mammals at the mercy of our urges” yet ends by pointing out that, like most other mammals, we’re fiercely committed to our progeny. And to watch Jane Hazlegrove’s Jess and Helena Lymbery’s Betty hilariously treating the marital home like a mad monkey-house is to see how remarkable that is.
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