Starting a family isn’t always easy. The look of horror on the face of a particularly hard-bitten news journalist as he remembered “having to” dash home to make love at the optimum moment for conception lives with me 20 years after the story. Similarly, I’ll never forget the desperation in the eyes of a colleague, followed by the effusion of joy as she went through fertility treatment and successful outcome. They are the only people I know who have spoken so openly. Since infertility affects one in six couples in the UK, the chances are that others have gone through the same thing, but in silence.
There are two kinds of silence in Gareth Farr’s new play. There is the silence that surrounds the couple at its centre, springing from fear of what others might think. “I’m a Jaffa and I don’t want people knowing that,” declares Dylan. When Jess doesn’t follow his reference, he elucidates: “Seedless.” Dylan will tell any lie he can at work to prevent his close colleague – and friend – from discovering why he needs to take days off and why he is so reluctant to go on career-enhancing business trips abroad.
There is also the silence of absence. Jess describes it: “There is a noise missing from this house and I can hear it all the time. The quiet deafens me.” A baby is “life and noise and everything”.
Farr’s second full-length play, after the Bruntwood prize-winning Britannia Waves the Rules, charts the couple’s course through attempts at conception (including numerous injections – if you’re squeamish, look away). The subject matter elicits sympathy, but the construction is paint-by-numbers schematic; each short scene over-obviously illustrates another aspect of the situation. Although Tessa Walker’s direction is clear, its lingering on details exaggerates the public-information-broadcast feel of the piece. Cutting – of text and production – would sharpen the drama.
Allyson Ava-Brown, as the neighbour and new mother, and Tom Walker, as Dylan’s edgy colleague, are both vivid (it would have been good to see more of them). The two main characters are touchingly rendered. Oliver Lansley’s nervy Dylan, fighting feelings of uselessness: “That is the level of my involvement. I wank”; Michelle Bonnard’s Jess, wanting the baby “so much that it hurts me”. If I have reservations about the play, I strongly endorse its message: infertility is not something people have to be quiet about.
The play is associated with a one-day Fertility Fest (Saturday 11 June, Park theatre, London). Artists, writers and medical experts will discuss topics such as facing the diagnosis of infertility, IVF, donation, surrogacy, the male experience, egg-freezing and alternative routes to parenthood. Full programme available here.
