A Welsh idiom for plain speaking is to be diflewyn ar dafod, which translates literally as being “without a hair on the tongue”. Rhiannon Boyle’s monologue Anfamol (Unmotherly) is filled with mouths, hair and a multitude of bodily functions – and is one of the most frank plays I’ve ever seen on a Welsh stage.
Ani is a family solicitor, recently turned 40. Broody but single and with no desire to find a partner, she decides to become a mother via the services of a Danish sperm bank. Exploring maternal desire and despair, Anfamol charts the challenges of contemporary single motherhood in a manner that is fearlessly forthright and often very funny. It is peppered with Fleabag-esque tonal shifts, mining humour from the formality of Welsh-language emails and the wryness of a cervical inspection, and has descriptions of postnatal depression that are devastatingly grim in their honesty.
As Ani, Bethan Ellis Owen traverses these shifts with effortless charisma in a joyously winning performance. We root for Ani even when she might not always be likable. Tightly and assuredly staged, with direction by Sara Lloyd and movement by Deborah Light, it contains several moments that are incredibly touching.
Certainly, its darker middle act is the most dramatically rich. Here, I wished the narrative would have lingered a little longer in the shadows, as the final act arrives with the cleanliness of a stork delivery compared to the viscerally laboured thematic explorations earlier on. It is also breezily uncritical: this is very much a tale of urban middle-classness, where good healthcare and childcare are a given.
Anfamol is the first full-length Welsh-language play to be staged in front of a live audience since the pandemic. Within a theatre ecology that often feels as if it has the fragility of a newborn, it feels like a cause for celebration.
At the Sherman theatre, Cardiff, until 2 October. Then touring.
