Review: Everywoman and Other Confessions at the Bunker Theatre

© NKT Studio

'When you have them, that's it!'

Motherhood is also death: the end of a woman’s life as she once knew it. This taboo is publicly aired in the refreshing Everywoman by an unnamed writer, which had a successful dry run at the Vault Festival last February. A year on – more polished and with new actress Jade Williams – it rather fittingly returns this time to the ground-breaking Bunker Theatre.

It's an extended meta-linguistic monologue in five chapters where we swiftly become privy to one woman's darkest thoughts and fears about sex, pregnancy, and motherhood at different life stages. Intimate and often achingly tender themes, such as abortion and miscarriage, are tackled with great poise and sensitivity. Despite these painful moments, however, there's plenty of candid humour throughout: the scene depicting the mundane lunacy of caring for a newborn is a comic triumph.

Throughout this delicately woven exposé, into which we are quietly eavesdropping, director Amelia Sears ensures the dramatic and comedic peaks are pronounced and well distributed. The simple staging by Charlotte Espiner is steeped in symbolism: the newly-drawn bath that Jade continually toe-dips reflects the career she's struggling to uphold, the postnatal body she has no time to pamper or simply the sense of peace and fulfilment she can no longer wholly achieve.

Detailed comparisons between the works of Philip Roth and Elena Ferrante point up society's insidious acceptance of misogyny: why stories of men are heralded as thematically universal while women's are not. The play works hard to redress this imbalance by foregrounding female experiences. In chapter 4 we hear snippets from the lives of other women and, although their distinct voices are well defined by Williams, the breadth of stories could have been more culturally diverse.

That said, Everywoman is a radical important work that deals head-on with uncomfortable truths that society tries to ignore. The physical and mental grinding down of a new mother, the curtailment of a woman's ambitions or indeed her right to choose not to have children, are universal realities that must be discussed without fear, shame or the need to remain anonymous, for the sake of women's mental health and identity.

Cocoa’s verdict: Everywoman runs for one week only as part of the Bunker Theatre's Takeover Season, so do check the theatre's website for the full programme of events and workshops. There is an additional confessional each night, after the play, which is definitely worth hanging around for!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Everywoman is on at the Bunker from 17th February – 22nd February.

Running time: 1hr (no interval) with additional playwright's confessional after the main show.