Anna Burnside reviews a production with solid performances but a flawed script.
An adult son visits his mother for the first time in eight months. His wife stays in the car: she has a headache. Which is, as his mother is fully aware, a “headache”.
He has some big news for the woman who, we find out gradually, brought him up in far from ideal circumstances. He is having a child of his own.
A new baby is often the balm that heals family wounds and the son, played sensitively by Mark Barrett, hopes this will be the case. But his mother, a convincingly waspish Blythe Duff, is not having it.
Writer Jonny Donahoe starts strongly, giving Duff’s character a convincing backstory and many salty lines. Where it falls down is with Barrett’s character’s tunnel vision rage at his mother.
In one speech he proclaims all his own great qualities and the ways in which he is different from his father. The bit that is left unsaid is that the reason he is a kind, caring, empathetic person is because his mother brought him up that way. These characters do not materialise out of the ether. They are learned behaviour.
Then there are two endings, neither of which offer a resolution.
This is a real shame because it’s a meaty subject to explore. Duff is fearlessly unlikeable, which is exactly what the part requires. But it needs to push forward, not leave the audience in a dead end.
Contact performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until 10 October 2026. It then tours to the Traverse Theatre (13-17 October) and Paisley Town Hall (20-23 October).
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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