Narratives of epic quests haven’t customarily involved a woman standing alone on a huge, almost bare, stage, talking to 700-odd audience members about the state of her uterus. But it’s 2019, this is the headline show of the Barbican’s Fertility Fest and that lone woman, thank goodness, is the wonderfully heart-on-sleeve performer Maxine Peake.
Peake stars in Australian writer Julia Leigh’s adaptation of her own 2016 memoir about her gruellingly long slog through IVF treatment, with its draining cycles of hope and disappointment. “I weigh myself down with hormones,” says Peake as Woman, but before we get to this stark point there’s an exciting whirligig of later-life love, as Woman reconnects with and then marries her old university boyfriend. Peake’s admirably open and expressive face is bathed in wry smiles at the heady absurdity of this overwhelming love.
Divorce at 42 leaves Woman with little option but to throw herself — as well as tens of thousands of dollars — upon the whimsical mercy of the fertility industry. The piece’s insistent bassline is the cost of everything in a world that is adept at obfuscating the true chances of success and Peake convincingly becomes more jangly and strung-out with each failed attempt.
Anne-Louise Sarks’s production initially involves Peake in some rather effortful taking up of positions on various parts of the stage, but settles down to become a sobering, must-hear story for our times.
Until May 12 (020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk)
