REVIEW: BACKSTROKE by Anna Mackmin at Donmar Warehouse until 12 April 2025

Images: Tamsin Grieg and Celia Imrie (photographer Johan Persson)

‘pleasingly crafted domestic drama’ ★★★ ½ 

Anna Mackmin’s pleasingly crafted new play is about mothers, motherhood, matriarchy and matrescence. As such it tries, in places, to be slightly too clever and to include too many issues. Nonetheless, there’s much to admire – and my case strongly identify with - here.

Beth (Celia Imrie) has a stroke and is taken to hospital where she lies inertly. We see the hospitalisation scene with paramedics twice for no particular reason. Thereafter her life and complicated relationship with her daughter Bo (Tamsin Grieg) is gradually unpicked in a series of flashbacks.

Imrie is, of course, very good indeed as this colourful, outrageous, irrational, difficult, irritating and capricious woman, vacillating between affectionate support and cruel put downs. She flounces, grins, shouts. says things mothers shouldn’t say to daughters and we wince. And she’s sliding into dementia in an impeccably observed and cruelly recognisable way.

It is, however, Grieg’s outstanding performance that one leaves the theatre thinking about. She wears a simple T shirt, Levis and boots with only a cardigan and a scarf to indicate occasional mood shifts. We see her aged 6, 13, 18, 21, 30, 50 and 51 and she nails it with total conviction every time. And she has an extraordinary way of revealing her thoughts as she turns away from her mother in fury, frustration, disbelief exhaustion and more – because, like almost every woman in her position - she has a demanding life of her own mainly focused on, Skylar, a troubled child she has adopted, an aspect of the plot which is not fully developed.

Among the remaining all-female cast, Lucy Briars is strong as a dour but well meaning nurse with Anita Reynolds contrasting as cuddly kind one, Georgina Rich, meanwhile, gives us a very plausible, play-it-by-the-book doctor who doesn’t listen much, along with a gentle but businesslike funeral director. 

Lex Brotherston’s set puts the play on three levels with most of the action downstage at stalls audience level, the hospital room in the middle and some distant scenes – including a rather effective one at a swimming pool - on a platform above. It works pretty well. 

Then there’s the film aspect of the production. Sudden flashes – visual and aural – indicate the time shifts in Beth’s head and, maybe Bo’s memory and we get grainy film of past incidents This is, I presume, meant to connote home movies but it doesn’t add a great deal.

Backstroke is a domestic drama which will resonate with anyone who has had to manage the tragedy of worsening dementia in a loved one and/or had to deal with a beloved but impossible parent. And I’ve done both so it touched me quite deeply, despite its flaws. 

BACKSTROKE  Written and directed by Anna Mackmin

Donmar Warehouse

24 February - 12 April 2025

Box Office

Cast and Creatives:

Tamsin Greig

Actor

Celia Imrie

Actor

Lucy Briers

Actor

Anita Reynolds

Actor

Georgina Rich

Actor

Anna Mackmin

Writer & Director

Lez Brotherston

Designer

Paule Constable

Lighting Designer

Christopher Shutt

Sound Designer

Gino Ricardo Green

Video Designer

Scarlett Mackmin

Choreographer

Anna Cooper CDG

Casting Director

Fiona Dunn

Associate Director