Gush Review – Jessica Hardwick is great as a mother navigating a whirlpool of emotions | stage

THere are some of the more profound life transitions of becoming a parent. Going out late at night and lying down for a long time. Responsibility comes. It’s an experience that requires redefining, transforming you from a caregiver to a caregiver, from a solo player to a team leader. Even when He approaches you, you know He will change you.

This is the fixed point in the world of transformation that playwright Jess Brodie identifies: not birth, but the moment before. It is a time to look back, reflect and re-evaluate as much as it is to speculate on the unknown path ahead.

Tenderly caressing a huge belly, Allie experiences all the fears a first-time mother feels: restless nights, avoiding toxic foods, and 24-hour maternity leave monitoring. It also has a feeling of unfinished business. She still has to figure out her first identity, and she’s about to transform again—this time into someone’s mother.

At its best, this is what Brody’s monologue is about: not so much the familiar pressures of pregnancy as a less exploratory quest for self-actualization. The impending birth is like a ticking time bomb, ticking louder than ever as Allie races to figure out if this middle-class life with her neurotic, controlling, and exhausting partner is the life she’s fully committed to.

Is it time to listen to those sexual urges that she has so successfully deprived herself of until now?

As a subject of the play, it is narrow in focus, and steeped in its politics. Gush has no interest in the world beyond Ally’s swirl of emotions. Even her feminist desire to stop pleasing people and demand more for herself seems selfish. But Brody writes intelligently and fluently, throwing up narrative surprises as she goes. She maintains a tight grip on her audience.

Above all, in Becky Hope-Palmer’s meticulous studio production, Jessica Hardwicke gives a terrific performance. On a Becky Minto set, half a crisp white surface, the other half a collection of inviting pillows – a symbol of the play’s tension between the alien and the warm – the actor rides the waves of emotion with tremendous sensitivity. Her voice is resonant and precise, and she masterfully captures Brody’s shifts in tone from sarcastic to horrified, embarrassed to sexy, angry to funny. Ghosh is worth watching for her performance alone.