Mary’s Babies is a new play by me, Maud Dromgoole, and directed by Tatty Hennessy, coming to Jermyn Street Theatre in March this year. It’s a play about donor conception and the changing landscape of modern family. It explores the ways science and society are changing how we build and how we relate to our family, and aims to tackle taboos around the subject of infertility and donor insemination.
MARY’S BABIES
By Maud Dromgoole
Directed by Tatty Hennessy
Set and costume by Anna Reid
Lighting by Jai Morjaria
Sound by Yvonne Gilbert
Casting by Matilda James
A co-production with Oak Theatre
Mary Barton, a pioneer of fertility treatment, thought her husband was perfect. And doesn’t every child deserve the perfect father? So Mary used her husband’s sperm to impregnate up to a thousand women, and then burnt all the records. A thousand resulting children, the ‘Barton Brood’, with no idea about their shared father. Meeting each other. Making friends. Having babies.
Maud Dromgoole’s play is based on the true story of Mary Barton and the Barton Brood, researched through surveys and interviews. Provocative, funny, and fascinating, it imagines a series of encounters between these unknowing half-siblings.
The press on Maud Dromgoole and Tatty Hennessy’s Acorn.
DROMGOOLE’S SCRIPT UNFURLS EXPERTLY Exeunt
HILARIOUS, CREATIVE, AND BEAUTIFUL LondonTheatre1
DROMGOOLE’S SCRIPT IS LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY. A REAL TRIUMPH West End Wilma
Maud Dromgoole is a writer whose plays have appeared at the Bunker, the Courtyard Theatre, the Arcola, Southwark Playhouse, and Tristan Bates Theatres.
Tatty Hennessy is an award-winning playwright, dramaturg and director.
All characters in Mary’s Babies are fictional.
Running time: Around 90 minutes.
Show Times
Monday – Saturday 7.30pm
Matinees Saturday 3.30pm
Tickets £30 Preview Tickets 20–21 March £15
Under 30? 100 tickets at £10 are available for under-30s.
Bookable online or by telephone – please bring proof of age to the performance. Only available until Saturday 30 March.
Concessions Available to over-60s, theatre unions, unwaged, access, students. £20
Please note that after Saturday 30 March all tickets are full price
Box Office 020 7287 2875. https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/marys-babies/