Theatre review: Stories

Nina Raine returns to the Dorfman, this time also directing her latest play Stories. It’s named after the idea that there are only seven basic stories in the world, and Anna (Claudie Blakley) seems to go through most of them – mainly the quest - in her attempts to have a baby. After a couple of years of trying with her partner Tom (Sam Troughton,) IVF is the step that makes it feel all too real for him and he breaks up with her. Approaching forty and finding herself single again, Anna becomes all too aware of her biological clock and decides to have the child on her own. She looks into finding a sperm donor online but doesn’t like the anonymity of it, and instead comes up with a plan to find the father herself – never quite giving up on the hope that Tom might change his mind, she nevertheless arranges to meet several men she knows (all also played by Troughton) who she thinks might be suitable candidates.

The play is largely built up of these attempts to find a donor who both fulfils Anna’s requirements and is willing to take on the responsibility; a number of false starts mean she feels time running out even more.

Stories seems to have had something of a Marmite response, and while I’m not sure I can see it being something that invites such a strong love/hate reaction (other than the emotional response to the subject matter) it’s definitely one with some major strengths and equally major weaknesses. On the plus side, it’s a very entertaining evening; for the most part a comedy, there’s a lot of funny scenes – Anna’s mother’s (Margot Leicester) reaction to being told she has a co-dependent relationship with her middle son is a great sequence, as is her father’s (Stephen Boxer) reaction to her shopping around for donors online (“That reminds me, I must do the Ocado order”) – and there’s a lot of good performances. Troughton, now seemingly typecast as the man women want to deposit his sperm in the Dorfman, plays six different men and Raine has fun putting him through his paces in a variety of accents and attitudes to make each of them stand out.

Blakley is also great at the heart of the story, but it feels like she’s doing all the heavy lifting in trying to make Anna a real character – her all-consuming desire for a child is all that defines her, but unlike the Young Vic’s take on Yerma this isn’t presented as a downright descent into insanity, so her demand that everyone acquiesce to her very specific requirements for a child starts to look entitled and self-absorbed. Not that the other characters are much more likeable, but there’s definitely something callous in the way she jokes about possibly finding a black father in a barber shop or a generic gay dad – the latter of which she actually attempts. Her job is in theatre – it’s not entirely clear what but possibly a casting director – so there’s also something a bit dickish about the fact that she regularly invites people to meetings where they think she’s going to offer them a job, only to find out she’s got a different motive.

She even approaches a post-menopausal acquaintance (Thusitha Jayasundera) with the offer of carrying a baby for her younger husband, and it quickly becomes apparent she doesn’t know her anywhere near well enough to realise how such a suggestion will affect her. I feel like this once again comes down to my regular complaint about writers directing their own work, but I don’t know what we were really meant to think of Anna; she’s presented largely sympathetically but also spends the whole play dragging others into her single-minded pursuit of a child, and berating them for not responding as she’d hoped. (And while we’re on Raine as director, not much she could have done about it I guess but I’m afraid the Dorfman’s horrible sightlines have defeated her blocking. At least this isn’t a play that relies particularly heavily on its visuals.)

In the second act more actors than just Troughton start doubling roles, and while he pretty much keeps them all to the British Isles, once everyone joins in it all goes a bit United Nations on the accent front with Jayasundera’s Australian, Boxer’s South African and Leicester’s Russian – either Raine’s real-life friend circle is a Benneton ad and she’s just recreating that, or they figured they’ve got Charmian Hoare on staff and might as well use her. Brian Vernel plays Anna’s brother with an accent matching Blakley’s, and goes American as the partner of the potential gay dad, which made me figure his final character must be quite major as he hadn’t used his own accent yet (he does, indeed, have a lengthy speech that becomes crucial in Anna’s eventual decision.) Stories remains watchable throughout, but the niggles and questions about so many elements of it lead to the realisation that I don’t know what, when it comes down to it, it’s actually trying to say.

Stories by Nina Raine is booking until the 28th of November at the National Theatre’s Dorfman.

Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Sarah M Lee.