'Backstroke' review — a gripping Tamsin Greig and Celia Imrie anchor this unflinching portrait of motherhood and caregiving

Read our review of Anna Mackmin's new play Backstroke, now in performances at the Donmar Warehouse to 12 April.

Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig bring a sparking yin-yang energy to Anna Mackmin’s play about a mother and daughter whose co-dependant, often toxic but unconventionally loving relationship has left invisible tentacles wrapped around daughter Bo (Greig) well into adulthood.

Now a fiftysomething mother to a daughter of her own, Bo’s memories of placating the tricky, unpredictable, hippieish Beth (Imrie) resurface once Beth is hospitalised following a stroke, having already lost swathes of her memory to dementia. It develops as a moving if repetitive portrait of a mother-daughter bond, while through the same frame, inking a supplementary portrait of how we as a nation handle caregiving.

Mackmin, who directs her own play, bravely explores the squeamishness with which we approach end-of-life care for the elderly – something we typically outsource to professionals. Bo will have fed and changed the nappies of her adopted daughter Skylar, yet she needs guidance from nurses to help her unconscious mother drink from a glass of water. Though later she applies Sudocrem to soothe suspected thrush, it’s a harrowing moment, with Bo concerned she’s violating her mother’s dignity.

Bo might have a greater sense of her mother’s tastes and preferences than the hospital staff, but, coupled with her incompetence around administering care, her attempt to instate Beth’s wish for nil by mouth appears grossly misjudged to Lucy Briers’ brisk nurse Carol. And at a time when concerns around assisted dying are making the news, it does initially seem as though Bo, busy with her London life as a TV writer, might be looking to manipulate the system.

But as each flashback scene to a younger Beth and Bo unfolds, filling in another corner of the picture, a greater sense of this duo’s fractious yet fond, chalk-and-cheese relationship emerges. Imrie’s Beth, all floaty kaftans and pink-tipped hair, is a rebellious bohemian; she’s a squatter-turned-houseowner – a relic from a generation who had it easier than Greig’s responsible, career-focused Bo.

There’s a devilish immaturity to Beth’s gleefully delivered sexual anecdotes and whimsical, metaphor-soaked life advice, spiked with cautionary putdowns about Bo’s weight and general demeanour. Yet through a scene in which Beth applies her experimental parenting methods to teaching Bo to swim, we sense the deep level of trust between them.

This scene plays out not on stage but in a swimming pool, pre-recorded by a film crew and projected onto the well-used back wall screen of Lez Brotherston’s stage design with the help of video designer Gino Ricardo Green.

Memory – its slippery, shifting, comforting nature – is key to Mackmin’s concept, and this screen, which hovers above Beth’s hospital bed, becomes a portal into her scrambled, fragmented thoughts, as well as those of Bo, for whom her daughter’s cries in the middle of the night are a recurring vision. That these visions are frequently visited memories makes sense, but the play feels generally repetitive, with too many scenes exploring the same dynamic, even if Imrie and Greig are always gripping to watch.

Elsewhere in this all-female cast are Anita Reynolds as sympathetic nurse Jill and Georgina Rich as nurse Paulina, caught between her seniors’ good-cop/bad-cop approach. Though the men in Beth and Bo’s lives are mentioned, they’re peripheral offstage presences in what is an unwavering, unflinching story of two-way mothering.

Backstroke is at the Donmar Warehouse to 12 April.

Photo credit: Backstroke (Photos by Johan Persson)