Lizzy Watts in (the) Woman [Charlie Flint]

JANE Upton’s Bruntwood Prize-shortlisted play, drawn from personal experience, examines a successful playwright’s troubled shift into motherhood.

We follow M (Lizzy Watts) as she navigates life with a newborn, attempts to keep her career on track, and maintain her female friendships (represented by Jamie-Rose Monk), alongside the support of her husband (Andre Squire).

M wants to write a play about her experiences, though her male producers (Josh Goulding and Monk) aren’t keen. They want music and marketability.

In an early, intentionally excruciating encounter between M and a former schoolmate (Goulding), with whom she once had a fling, he tells her he’d expected more of her than settling down and having kids in their hometown.

It transpires that this is the opening scene of the play she’s writing, and his callous remark partly inspired it. Their imagined tryst in the back of his van reflects her turmoil over a lost libido and the growing sexual distance from her husband.

The metatheatricality of the 90-minute piece is by turn exhilarating and frustrating. There’s plenty of humour, but the layering of motherhood’s pitfalls occasionally feels repetitive.

Angharad Jones offers assured direction, Watts is an immensely charismatic performer, and Upton’s portrayal of a woman balancing creative ambition with the demands of early parenthood is poignant.

Yet I suspect the play’s central theme – the strain of new motherhood in a man’s world – will strike a deeper chord with a female audience.

Until October 25
parktheatre.co.uk