Don’t miss this gem of a play which is at Summerhall until 26th August.
Surrender is a powerful and affecting examination of what it is to be a mother, where society and the establishment can feel free to stigmatise and judge women when they embark on motherhood.
On arrival the audience is treated to a starkly built set featuring a single chair and two coats. The central character ‘Mother’, is played with great effect by Phoebe Ladenburg, who also co-devised and co-directed Surrender, which was written by Sophie Swithinbank, award winning playwright and screenwriter.
Mother is in prison and in the visiting room is waiting to meet her daughter from whom she has been estranged for 11 years. She has only one hour, closely watched by security. From the start the play looks backwards as in monologue it examines how the central character came to be locked up. The audience is challenged as Mother recounts her version of events, at times unreliably narrated, full of guilt, switching between speaking to her daughter, with whom she is desperate to reconnect, and recollections of past police interviews, conducted in a blurred babble as though taking place underwater, further indicating the sense of disconnection.
The lighting effects in the confined space of Summerhall’s TechCube 0 are cleverly used to switch scenes, abrupt white spotlights when shifting to police interviews, more subtle and soft when in reflective mode with her daughter.
Surrender looks at the social care system, which often saves lives, but in which occasionally a parent can become trapped through a series of mistakes and life events which then tumble with a depressing sense of inevitability – loss of a job, single parenthood, sleep deprivation with a newborn, social services involvement, ultimately running out of time to turn the clock back.
It is a searing insight into how an unsympathetic system, designed to help, can frustrate, doing the very opposite of what it is meant to do.
As the audience, we are drawn in, our job to find out what the crime is. At times the task is an uncomfortable one as Phoebe Ladenburg’s character directly addresses a member of the audience with a direct question: we are forced to think, ‘what would we do?’
Phoebe Ladenburg gives a dazzling performance as the mother, with a huge emotional range demonstrated in the play which confronts the issues women face when embarking on motherhood. The play changes emphasis in the last act when the writing becomes almost poetic in which we are left with a dilemma, how much of themselves do women have to give to fulfil societal expectations of them?
Written by Sophie Swithinbank in creative partnership with Phoebe Ladenburg and Director Associate Nancy Medina
Phoebe Ladenburg is a multi-award-winning actor, director and theatre maker. Her directing/ dramaturgy credits include Clown Sex for stage and audio (nominated for two Off West End Awards,
Sophie Swithinbank is a multi-award-winning playwright and screenwriter, based in London. She is the 2023 winner of the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award. Sophie’s play Bacon (Tony Craze Award Winner 2018) ran at Finborough Theatre in 2022, to critical acclaim, winning three Off West End Awards.
Nancy Medina is Artistic Director of Bristol Old Vic, taking the role in 2023. In Oct 2023 she directed her first production for the theatre, a revival of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy.
1 August – 26 August