New Drama
Mary’s Babies
DIRECTED BY TATTY HENNESSY.
13 April 2019
Overview
“I’m drawing a line and from now on we’re going to have to be completely honest about everything with each other. I think.”
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.
Maud Dromgoole’s play is based on a true story researched through surveys and interviews. Provocative, funny, and fascinating, it imagines a series of encounters between these unknowing half-siblings.
Maud Dromgoole is a writer whose plays have appeared at the Bunker, the Courtyard Theatre, the Arcola, Southwark Playhouse, and Tristan Bates Theatres.
Tatty Hennessy is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg and director.
People
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Actor
Playwright
Director
Set and costume design
Lighting design
Sound design
Casting director
Media
“Written by the astonishingly gifted Maud Dromgoole and directed with sensitivity and wit by Tatty Hennesey.”
“An absorbing look at the complicated questions raised by technology.”
“A gripping premise.”
“A fascinating story…skilfully portrayed by Katy Stephens and Emma Fielding.”
“Legacy of fertility clinic’s dark truth is wittily probed.”
“An entertaining and very sensitive handling of a topic that goes straight to the core of our identity.”