**** Four Stars, Evening Standard
"This sensitively handled, beautifully calibrated chamber piece...Highly recommended."" Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
"Nicolette Kay's production is sensitive and well paced" Sam Marlowe, The Times
"Committed performances from Charlotte Lucas and Kristin Milward" Kieron Quirke, Time Out
"Two fine performances in Nicolette Kay's gripping but measured production." Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
"The moment of revelation is one to savour" Kieron Quirke, Time Out
"The performances, by Charlotte Lucas as Billie and Kristin Milward as Anna, are faultless." Sam Marlowe, The Times
"Two impeccable performances." Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate
"A fine production...This is another valuable Finborough addition to the London repertoire." Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate
"The last time I cried at the theatre was ten years ago at the National...that is till last night, when – on a tiny stage above a pub in Earl's Court – a line was delivered with such poignancy and tenderness my eyes flooded with tears...
This production contrives somehow to get everything right." Music OmH
"If 'Fringe' carries negative connotations in quality (as opposed to enterprise and innovation) terms then this isn't Fringe. Kay's direction sculpts all the script's mood-shifts, the awkward uncertainties, disappointments and hopeful conversational sallies..... Splendidly played in Nicolette Kay's Finborough production, the play's London premiere." Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate
"Australian writer Joanna Murray-Smith's best-known in Britain for Honour, which succeeded wildly in the Cottesloe and did respectably in a (different) West End production. Its marital tensions translate into generational terms in this shorter play, explored through cultural assumptions."
Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate
"Murray-Smith is one of Australia's most respected writers, both as novelist and playwright, is evident throughout. The dialogue skilfully weaves the mundane with painful moments of revelation and self-examination, and is spiked with flashes of humour." Music OmH
"The past actions and present standpoints of the women are compellingly examined by Murray-Smith" Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
"If there is one thing Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith understands, it is the shifting dynamics of a close relationship." Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard
"Politics and feminism, from Anna's Sixties radicalism to Billie's woollier modernity, are examined through the fractured prism of a relationship that has only ever existed inside the two women's imaginations." Sam Marlowe, The Times
"This is not just a play about mothers and daughters. Without seeming to do so – and certainly without the aggravating preachiness of 'issue' plays – it invites an examination of the political and social ideologies that separate two generations of women." Music OmH
"Murray-Smith adroitly conveys the unmet demands and the disappointments, the cruelties and comforts of mother-daughter connection" Sam Marlowe, The Times
"Love Child deserves a transfer to a bigger venue but life is rarely so just – catch this small gem of a production while you can." Music OmH
"Alex Marker's cool, minimalist set, a room in Anna's London home, sits elegantly in the Finborough's tiny space." Heather Neill, The Stage
"Alex Marker's set, from floor to tasteful designer accoutrements, could grace any stage." Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate
Reviews for Love Child
