Can Any Mother Help Me?

The Story of the Cooperative

Correspondence Club

Press Quotes

On Foursight's 2009 production of Can Any Mother Help Me?

Daily Info, Oxford - 23rd March 2009
Helen Ward

"Developed by members of the company, Can Any Mother Help Me? is an exquisite evocation of the friendships fostered between the women who made up the CCC. With the passing years the magazine becomes a place where they can not only be themselves, but where they can grow up and grow old together.

Fine, well-paced performances from all members of the cast are complemented by a well chosen set and lighting that captures everything from the dinginess of the mid-20th century British home to the gothic horror of “Murder in the Organ Loft” (it’s complicated).

Funny, entertaining, moving and above all truthful, this is a first rate piece of theatre that will appeal to a wide audience: not just women. Not to be missed."

To read the full review, click here .

Birmingham Post - 20th March 2009
Terry Grimley

"The show, devised by the company and based on the original letters, is a powerful social document of an era when many intelligent women found that the expectations of them as homemakers left them bereft of intellectual stimulation. By turns it is sad, funny and moving.

Its success is greatly helped by the fluid staging, with a mobile set including a staircase on castors, and by the close integration of sung and instrumental music featuring harp, piano, violin and clarinet, performed by members of the six-strong cast.

Produced in partnership with the Courtyard, Hereford, this beautifully crafted piece is a real credit to West Midlands theatre."

 To read the full review, click here .

The Press - 5th March 2009
Charles Hutchinson

"Mary Keith’s haunting music bleeds seamlessly into the narrative, played and sung live by the cast, most notably Samantha Fox on the harp. Movement is exemplary too, whether cast members are linking together in choreographed steps or putting furniture to inventive use, especially in a tea-drinking scene that seems to defy gravity. The revolving staircase, in particular, adds to the unbroken flow of a 90-minute play that rightly foregoes an interval.

None of this physicality detracts from the play’s essence: story telling of sincerity, insight and humour down the years of everyday life’s highs and lows, arrivals and departures. These stories do not make the ordinary extraordinary, but emphasise both the diversity and commonality of experience: once intimate secrets now shared to wide impact."

To read the full review, click here .

The Stage - 4th March 2009
Kevin Berry

"Seemingly ordinary lives are traced through the letters and they become far from ordinary. There is deep emotional insight, stark incident, lively humour and a growing sense of the value of the magazine. The dialogue is clear and immediate and the acting has a moving integrity.

Jill Dowse’s playing of an emotionally disintegrating woman is exemplary. Catriona Martin suggests so much with her expressions and gestures and Samantha Fox shines as a woman who discovers a talent for writing, but remains very much a housewife. There is deep commitment from everyone in the cast and a palpable respect for the people they are playing."

To read the full review, click here .

One Suffolk - March 2009
Paul Pearce-Couch

"Performances from the six-woman cast are electrifying and we engage immediately with, among others, Roberta, who seems  obsessed with homespun theories on female sexuality and reproduction; Isis, whose husband packs her off for electroconvulsive therapy when it’s discovered that she’s had dalliances with the family doctor; and  the effervescent Yonire, the would-be murderess in the organ loft."

What's On Stage - 25th February 2009

"The production’s high point is the telling of a gripping, Gothic horror-tinged story involving organ music and attempted rape in a post-pub visit to a church.  With carefully choreographed movement, the ensemble support the storyteller (Lucy Tuck) who makes the most of the dramatic potential of the letter, and gives an assured performance which brings out the comedy, beauty and brutality of the tale.
  The performance draws to a close with the tear-jerking testimonies of the bereaved widow and the last, surprisingly lucid, writings of a woman on her death bed.  Living up to the core values of the company, the performers can be proud that they appear as tight and supportive an ensemble as the group of women correspondents they so successfully portray."

To read the full review, click here .

The Hereford Times - 24th February 2009

To read the full review, click here .

The Guardian (northern edition)

Theatre Pick of the Week, 28th February 2009

Audience Quotes

"We went to your 'Can Any Mother Help Me?' in Ipswich this week and
just wanted to let you know that it is one of the best things we have seen
at the Wolsey. It was beautiful to watch, absorbing, moving, amusing and
more."

"I would like to congratulate the company on "Can Any Mother Help Me?" which I saw with two of my sisters at the Oxford Playhouse.  It was beautifully portrayed, sustaining interest and variety throughout, with stunningly good performances from all the cast.  It was particularly moving for us as we are the children of one CCC member".

"I'd read the book and was curious as to how it would be staged....I went with a group of ladies and we all left the theatre having had a wonderful and absorbing evening meeting the various characters so vividly brought to life.....congratulations to all on the acting and staging."

"We were all delighted with it.  It was such an imaginative and visually exciting production, with lovely use of movement, stage furniture and music...We loved your production and want to thank you for bringing the writing and lives of these very special women to public acclaim.  It makes us very proud of our mother and all the CCC women."

"Came to see your performance at the Arena Theatre this afternoon
and was blown away by it! Very moving, wonderful set and effects and the
acting, singing and playing was superb. A wonderful production. Thank you
very much to you all!"

"The friend whom we invited to go with us was very touched especially by the final scenes of the play which covered widowhood. She could so identify with the feelings and it helped her - she's in her  second year of widowhood. I loved it too. It reminded me of the Schubert Song Cycle - Woman's Love and  Life - covering every life stage's emotions. What a team you are for imaginative scene creations and staging."

"Just wanted to say how much I and my daughter enjoyed the performance on Tuesday. It was a performance that made me want to laugh, nod and cry; it was delightful. I also loved the ingenuity of the production."

Press Quotes

on the book Can Any Mother Help Me?
by Jenna Bailey (Faber, 2007)

 
I wept as I read it…Grand girls, ordinary goddesses: I wish I’d known them, by the end I felt I did. – The Guardian

I found myself alternately laughing aloud at familiar domestic agonies, and with eyes full of tears at the bravery with which these women detailed love and loss. – The Independent

Equally entertaining and moving. At the end of the book we mourn these remarkable, ordinary women as if they had been our own. – The Times

A remarkable opportunity to indulge in that most human of pleasures, eavesdropping. And to confirm the truth of that most well-worn of clichés, that there is no such thing as an ordinary life. – The Observer