Pregnant cause

LIFE comes down to earth with a bump for Durham Gala Theatre next week when the rare sight of an all-female cast takes on Amanda Whittington’s play which recaptures the atmosphere of a 19-year-old teenager giving birth at a time when an “out of wedlock”

pregnancy was still a matter of some shame.

Victoria Holmes, 23, makes her professional debut at Durham as Mary, who is sent into a mother and baby home to hide the birth, while experienced actress Sian Murray takes on the role of Matron.

Both have seen the results of unplanned pregnancies and Holmes had a brush with reality when she wore a pregnancy bump outside the Gala last week.

“I’ve been ringing up anyone who’s ever had a baby for advice,” says Holmes who took time out in Australia after the Italia Conti Academy before auditioning for acting roles.

“After a while it’s surprising how quickly you forget you’re not pregnant because you have the bump on all the time and you start treating it like it’s part of you. But what we found was all the research and advice we got was completely different,” she adds about her other cast members, reflecting that some struggle when expecting a baby while others seem to do much better.

She points out that it is society which is the problem in Mary’s case while the Matron is trying to give her young charges a chance of surviving the experience without a baby “ending her life”.

“On the first day of rehearsal I put my bump on and almost forgot it was there and went and sat outside the theatre and had a couple of people commenting as they went past. It was interesting in this day and age that people still had some oldfashioned views. One elderly woman walked past and said to her friend ‘oh, it makes you think when you see things like that’. I started thinking ‘I’m 23, I could have a baby like that’, but I do realise that I look quite young,” Holmes says.

In actual fact her character has to wear a succession of bumps to cover the period that Mary goes into the home at seven months and the action follows the period up to her giving birth.

Director Simon Stallworthy says: “These are specially made baby bumps, but not the full weight because the cast would just get exhausted. We get through six or seven bumps because cast members go through a month of life in the home.” He agrees this was more than a “one lump or two” order to the costumiers.

On the choice of Be My Baby, he says: “We started to branch out with Betrayal because I don’t want us just to be known as a theatre that produces plays with local topics. Although this is isn’t specifically written for the region, this could have taken place anywhere because these mother and baby homes existed all over the country and it could be Newcastle or Darlington. It’s just as relevant to this area.”

HE points out that the girls could have come from anywhere because people often wanted to send unmarried daughters who were pregnant well away from home to ensure that they weren’t recognised.

Stallworthy is quick to point out that Amanda Whittington’s play, written in 1997, isn’t a musical, even though the title is inspired by The Ronettes’ song.

“Only one song is performed in its entirety, Chapel Of Love, while all the rest are snippets of songs and are naturalistically woven into the plot,” says Stallworthy, with Murray agreeing that she, too, thought the show was going to be a musical until she did some research into the project.

Murray, who was a child of the Sixties, recalls a girl getting pregnant at her convent school.

“She was a Marilyn Monroe-type, very blonde, very buxom and she became pregnant at 14. It was quite something because she stayed on at school. What was lovely was that two years later she married the father of the child and we all went to the wedding and the little boy was a page. That was incredibly enlightened for a school with a Catholic background and a somewhat enlightened Mother Superior.”

She agrees that, at first, she felt that her character would have to come across as the baddie of the piece. “She’s quite a mercurial character and does what she thinks is best for the girls. There were few alternatives in 1964. Abortion was one of them, but a very dangerous way to go. In her own strange way she cares for the girls but runs the home with a rod of iron and will appear hard to a modern eye,” she says.

Stallworthy says that it’s a lot easier working on an all-women production after taking on the all-male demands of Alf Ramsey Knew My Grandfather, the previously successful in-house production.

“There’s a definite difference.

At five to ten the girls are all ready, raring to start. While a few weeks ago, at ten, the lads were finishing a last fag, going down to get their coffee. One’s lost their script, while another is still stuck on the train and a couple have hang-overs. The day is differently structured,” he says.

■ Be My Baby, Durham Gala Theatre, June 18-27.

Tickets: £13.

Box Office: 0191-332-4041