REVIEW: Blueberries for the Rainbow by Hazel Fattorusso at Bread & Roses Theatre 28 Nov - 2 Dec 2023

‘a very human experience’ ★★★★

Nothing divides a room like showing an experience. The ones who have gone through it feel a sense of recognition and the ones who haven’t may wonder if it really could be as bad as all that. Perhaps parenthood is the best example of this. In Hazel Fattorusso’s keenly observed Blueberries for the Rainbow, we get a no-holds-barred version of motherhood, warts and all. The difficulties associated with childbirth and child-rearing is made visceral. There are moments for any mother where the cocktail of hormones, the pressures of caring for a new life, and the emotions of one of life’s greatest moments can be too much, and it is all on display here.

Loretta (Steph Sarratt) is a second-time mother with a very young baby and she is discovering it to be harder this time around, with a 5-year-old in school and a baby who won’t settle easily. She feels she is not doing enough for the older child and is always advised that “baby comes first”, even before herself. Naturally, there is a preoccupation with sleep when one has very little of it. She wryly comments how she hates those people who curl up in an airplane and sleep through the flight. Sarratt does a great job of expressing the struggle of a mother trying to find balance in a world that has gone off-kilter.

Her good friend, Catherine (Louise Devlin), who is heavily pregnant, has come over to visit. Cat starts to get concerned about her friend, and for good reason: Loretta is depressed and doesn’t see herself as a good enough mother, berating herself for small things. Those who prove at times unhelpful are Loretta’s husband, Amit (Adil Akram) and her mother, Bernie (Corinne Strickett). The father’s perspective of maternity leave as a holiday demonstrates his lack of understanding of what his wife is facing and Bernie’s comparisons with her own experience, in not having any help from her own mother, just adds to Loretta’s guilt. Despite the intensity, there is a lovely scene when Loretta tells Adil that she’s pregnant, complete with the soundtrack from Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach, which reminds us of the joy of a new life.

The show had clear direction throughout, though I wondered about the purpose of Cat sitting among us in the audience during Loretta’s main monologue scene. However, on stage they carry themselves so naturally as two mothers with young children juggling so many things at once. The staging gave a sense of the chaos of having small children in the home, filled with furniture and toys. It gave the sense of being closed in, just as Loretta must have felt. The off-stage area was used well for building the tension in the plot until the very end.

When there are so few productions on the theme of motherhood in the first year, it’s hard not to compare with the ones in existence. In recent years, we have had more on the topic as female writers are given wider berth (pun intended) to share their versions of this very human experience. In Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Mum, we have a surreal, dream-like (more of a nightmare) version of early motherhood, while Mathilde Dratwa’s Milk and Gall painted a humorous, almost absurdist picture. Fattorusso’s version proves much more based in reality; it deals with the nuts and bolts of remembering and forgetting the million little jobs that need to be done, like blueberries in a child’s lunch. Ultimately, Loretta’s struggle is not so much the hormones or emotions, but the inner voice that tells her she is not good enough as a mother. That certainly is an experience no-one deserves.

Blueberries for the Rainbow by Hazel Fattorusso at Bread & Roses Theatre 28 Nov - 2 Dec 2023

Written by Hazel Fattorusso

Performed by Steph Sarratt, Louise Devlin, Corinne Strickett, Adil Akram

Directed by Samantha Pears

Reviewed by Mariam Mathew