Theatre review: Mumfighter at Swansea Grand Theatre

Molly Stubbs

In May last year, a man appeared at my front door collecting for SCOPE. Despite the ‘No cold callers’ sign our house’s previous owner had stuck to the front door, he brightly and breezily rattled off the charity’s many benefits.

He had found his perfect target in me, and my resulting monthly pledge was equally as much desperation for the interaction to end as genuine desire to help a worthy cause.

Founded in 1952 by parents of children with cerebral palsy, SCOPE has since become dedicated to helping those with all disabilities. After doing some research into the charity’s history, I was happy to have signed up in support.

But support does not equal understanding, it’s not even the first step to breaking down barriers of ignorance.

Shame

A result of archaic shame and, more recently, the provision of separate SEN education and accommodations, it seems people with disabilities are often hidden. The resulting lack of knowledge about these conditions only makes it easier for us to continue, knowingly and unknowingly, discriminating against people who live with them, and for mothers of disabled children to feel as if they are constantly fighting a losing battle.

As Zoe Richards, CEO of Learning Disability Wales says, “The inability to access the services and support that ensure their child lives a good life creates a fighter in even the meekest of parents.” This forms the basis for Grand Ambition’s newest production, Mumfighter.

The one-woman show, written by Tracy Harris and directed by Richard Mylan, depicts a mother, Amber (Katie Payne), going ten rounds to win her daughter, Bea, the care and support she needs for her cerebral palsy. Whether it’s the National Health Service’s bureaucracy, her absent husband, society’s ongoing ableism, or her own murky past filled with prejudice, Amber goes in and goes in hard.

Being the only performer on stage, tasked with commanding an audience’s attention for an hour and ten minutes is not exactly a walk in the park. But command Payne does, manifesting her character both physically and verbally so that the eye can drift nowhere else.

Chameleon

With subtle changes in expression and accent, Payne evokes a cast of characters that instantly make the audience forget there is only one person in front of them. The gentleness with which she handles her boxing gloves transform them into her baby daughter. A well-timed, sickly-sweet smile sees her shape-shift into a district nurse. Payne is a chameleon, doing it all and doing it well.

Mumfighter holds nothing back, showing the specifics of raising a child with a disability to both an upsetting and uplifting degree. This is majorly because it’s based on Harris’s lived experience of raising a child with cerebral palsy.

“The whole diagnosis and also being kind of put into this world of disability that I knew nothing about and also being a first-time parent, not really knowing the system, was a shock,” Harris shared about her decision to create Mumfighter. “I think it’s about empathy for people and their stories and journeys.”

Ring of truth

Grand Ambition also worked with parents of disabled children across South Wales in November 2023 to ensure the play is as truthful as possible. As the audience watches the narrative unfold, they’re witnessing what thousands of parents go through every day, immersed in their reality.

The most striking decision Harris made was to pen the play in verse. As well as ensuring the story is easy to follow, this allows Payne to inject humour, playfulness, anger, confusion, disillusionment, or fear into the culmination of every line. There is not a single dull moment. The monologue at times resembles a nursery-rhyme, one a mother might sing to her child, making the darker moments all the more impactful.

However, the dedication to rhyme often results in words ending lines not because they are the best one for the situation, but because they’re phonetically similar to the ones that ended the previous sentence. Additionally, a lot of the moments wherein internal conflict is highest are obscured, in the poetic sense, and are carried only by Payne’s tone. For me, this rendered Mumfighter, though certainly empathetic, more of an educational than emotional experience.

Superlative

Just like Mumfighter’s lone actor, there is a single set-piece that forms the performance’s backdrop, and later its stage. A boxing ring, recreated in exacting detail by Elin Steele, looms large behind Amber before she even knows it will be her fighting in it. It also provides the perfect foundation for some superlative light and sound work, courtesy of Cara Hood, Dai Griff and Steve Balsamo.

It’s immediately apparent how well a boxing ring works with such a production. Spotlights hang not from the rafters but from the ring’s trusses, casting searing beams upon Amber and her predicament. The ropes, themselves LEDs, turn the set from the scene of a fight into a nightclub, a family home, and the inside of Amber’s messy mind. The announcer’s anxiety-inducing boom counts down, while blasting music, the main sonic component of which is alarms, convey not the excitement of a fighter’s entrance but the nightmarish situation in which Amber finds herself.

Mumfighter has its quieter moments too, its plinking acoustics and rare oases of bliss among the madness, but they never deaden the pace. The rollercoaster keeps going, riding all the way to a conclusion that, unless they’re forced to as Amber is, many people will never come to.

Nowadays, most of us make genuine efforts to learn about the struggles of under-represented communities. Even so, the everyday realities of those struggles often remain hidden, leaving the individuals attempting to make the best of them feeling even more alone.

Treat

Mumfighter’s director Richard Mylan said of Grand Ambition, “It is important to us to tell the stories of marginalised people, representing voices less frequently heard on our stages.” That Mumfighter is not just a theatrical treat, pushing several boundaries of the ‘stage,’ but an important step in education and solidarity is by far its greatest success.

Mumfighter is showing at Swansea Grand until the 25th October 2024. To find out more about the production and purchase tickets, visit the Swansea Grand site.