There is a long history in drama, stretching from Euripides to Oscar Wilde, of babies being lost, abandoned or mislaid. But Sam Potter’s 70-minute, one-woman play brings an extra dimension to the subject by showing the consequences to a young mother of the discovery that her beloved daughter is not really hers. It makes for a quietly compelling, thought-provoking narrative until the point where Potter injects factitious drama into a fascinating situation.
The virtue of both Potter’s writing and Sophie Khan Levy’s performance is that you believe totally in Hanna. As she relates her story, you see that she is a bright, clever 21-year-old, brought up on a Hemel Hempstead housing estate, who missed her chance of going to university when she got unexpectedly pregnant. Despite maternal opposition, she has the baby and looks forward to life with her boyfriend, Pete. But the day after it is born, the baby is taken away from her to be treated for suspected jaundice and quickly returned to her arms. Only three years later do DNA tests reveal that because of a hospital mix-up, Ellie, the child Hanna has lovingly raised, is not actually hers.
Potter uses this to raise a whole series of questions about class, race and nature versus nurture. Everything stems, however, from Hanna’s palpable delight in motherhood: she talks movingly about the love-surge that follows childbirth, when you adore every living creature from the postman to Piers Morgan. When she visits Ellie’s rich, Asian birth mother, Razina, she initially resents the atmosphere of privilege as she sees the daughter of the house – really her own – playing with a toy kitchen set “almost bigger than our actual kitchen”.
Yet Hanna delights in the friendship of the two mixed-up children and persuasively argues that families are not fixed in stone. For the first two-thirds of George Turvey’s Papatango production, I found myself hanging on every word. Levy has the gift of seeming to address each audience member individually and catches perfectly Hanna’s mix of motherly love and residual guilt.
I just regret that Potter turns a moving human dilemma into something that feels like a manufactured story. What touches us is Hanna’s attachment to a child who is not hers by blood but who steals her heart. It doesn’t need a cliff-edge climax to generate false excitement.
- At the Arcola theatre, London, until 20 January. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
