Production Photography Released For New Play MUM From The Olivier Award-Winning Writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Francesca Moody Productions, Soho Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Popcorn Group present MUM By Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
PRODUCTION PHOTOGRAPHY RELEASED FOR ‘MUM’, A NEW PLAY FROM THE OLIVIER AWARD-WINNING WRITER OF ‘EMILIA’ MORGAN LLOYD MALCOLM AND THE ACCLAIMED PRODUCER OF ‘FLEABAG’ AND ‘BABY REINDEER’ FRANCESCA MOODY.
SOPHIE MELVILLE, DENISE BLACK AND CAT SIMMONS STAR IN THE PRODUCTION NOW PLAYING AT THEATRE ROYAL PLYMOUTH UNTIL 16 OCTOBER BEFORE TRANSFERRING TO SOHO THEATRE FROM 20 OCTOBER - 20 NOVEMBER.
Production images have been released today for the world premiere of MUM starring Sophie Melville, Denise Black and Cat Simmons. This provocative and unflinching portrayal of early motherhood and mental health, written by Olivier award-winning playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Emilia, The Globe/ West End) and directed by Abigail Graham (soon to also direct Aladdin at Lyric Hammersmith and The Merchant of Venice at The Globe) is now on at Theatre Royal Plymouth until 16 October before transferring to Soho Theatre from 20 October – 20 November where it will have a press night on Tuesday 26 October.
This unmissable world premiere is a collaboration between Francesca Moody Productions (original producer of Fleabag, the Olivier award-winning Baby Reindeer, Shedinburgh Fringe Festival and Leopards which recently closed at the Rose Theatre) and writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (whose hit show Emilia won three Olivier Awards in 2020 and whose new punk musical play Typical Girls is currently running at Sheffield Crucible).
Motherhood. No one can prepare you for it. No matter how much you tell yourself you can do it - can you? Where’s the rush of love? When will you sleep again? What if the thing you fear most is also the thing you crave? All you wanted was one night of unbroken sleep, what have you done?
Nina is a new mum and tonight is her first night off. Tonight is about pizza and wine and letting go. But Nina didn’t feel prepared for motherhood and isn’t sure she fits the job description. Nina feels like she’s losing her grip.
This thought-provoking, funny and honest new play shines a light on early motherhood, anxiety and mental health. MUM examines the pressures and complex emotions many women experience when they have a baby. At a time when mothers have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic, never has it been more pertinent to explore these issues.
MUM is written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, directed by Abigail Graham, the associate director is TD Moyo, set and costume is designed by Sarah Beaton, lighting by Sally Ferguson, sound by Anna Clock and movement by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster.
LISTINGS
MUM
Age guidance 14+
Running Time: 60 minutes
The Drum
Royal Parade, Plymouth PL1 2TR
30 September - 16 October 2021
Monday – Saturday 7.45pm
2.30pm Matinees: 7 & 14 October
Box office: 01752 267222
Twitter: @TRPlymouth
Instagram: @
Main House
21 Dean St, London W1D 3NE
20 October – 20 November 2021
Monday – Saturday 7.30pm.
3pm Matinees: Thursday 28 October, Saturday 30 October, Thursday 4 November, Thursday 11 November, Saturday 13 November, Saturday 20 November
Previews: Wednesday 20 October & Thursday 21 October.
Captioned Performance: 10 November 7.30pm
Tickets: from £11
Box office: 020 7478 0100
Press Night: Tuesday 26 October 7.30pm
Twitter: @sohotheatre
Instagram: @sohotheatre
Francesca Moody Productions
Twitter: @FMP_Theatre
Instagram: @Francesca_Moody_
Popcorn Group
Twitter: @ThePopcornGroup
Instagram: @thepopcorngroup
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Director Abigail Graham
Set and Costume Sarah Beaton
Lighting Sally Ferguson
Sound and composition Anna Clock
Movement Annie-Lunette Deakin-Foster
Associate Director TD Moyo
Associate Producer: Kater Gordon
SEE IT SAFELY
Theatre Royal Plymouth & Soho Theatre have been granted the use of Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre's See It Safely mark. The mark certifies that they are complying with the latest Government and industry COVID-19 guidelines, to ensure the safety of staff and audiences. You can find out more here about the measures they are putting in place ready for your visit, and what you will need to know beforehand. More details are here and here.
BIOGRAPHIES
DENISE BLACK
Theatre includes: The Deep Blue Sea (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Shadow Factory (Nuffield Theatre); Kindertransport (Nottingham Playhouse); Machinal (Almeida); The Cherry Orchard (Sherman Theatre); Winter Hill (Bolton Octagon); Pack (Finborough Theatre); Sister Act (UK Tour) Calendar Girls (Tour); Sisters (
Television includes: Queer As Folk, Cucumber, Bad Girls, Coronation Street; Emmerdale; Father Brown, Unforgotten, The Irregulars, Informer, Benidorm; Midsomer Murders; Exile; Small Island; Robin Hood; Dalziel and Pascoe; Sensitive Skin; Doc Martin, New Tricks, The Bill, No Angels, Born and Bred; To The Ends of the Earth; Hear the Silence; Serious and Organised; The Brief; Viva Las Blackpool; Waking the Dead; Daddy’s Girl; On Home Ground; Second Coming; Where the Heart Is; A Good Thief; Clocking Off; Inspector Lyndley; Mersey Beat; How to Love in the 21st Century; Peak Practice; Sins; The Vice; The Scarlet Pimpernel; The Pat Phoenix Story; A Touch Of Frost; Macbeth.
Film includes: The Last Tree, Last Orders.
Radio includes: Counter-Measures: Rise and Shine, Damaged Goods, Doctor Who.
SOPHIE MELVILLE
Sophie trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Theatre credits include: Masks and Faces (Finborough Theatre), Herding Cats (Soho Theatre); Living Newspaper (Royal Court Theatre), Pops (Roxy Assembly – The Stage Award for Outstanding Performance), Wolfie (Theatre503), Blue (Chapter Theatre); Close Quarters (Sheffield Crucible); Pops (Young Vic); No One Will Tell Me How to Start a Revolution (Hampstead Theatre); The Divide (The Old Vic); Pagans (Old Vic); Low Level Panic (Orange Tree Theatre); 2066 (Almeida Theatre); Blackbird (The Other Room Theatre, Wales Theatre Awards Best Female Performance); Insignificance (Theatr Clwyd); Iphigenia in Splott (National Theatre/Theater 59E59 NYC/The Sherman/Edinburgh Fringe Festival and International Tour, The Stage Award for Acting Excellence, Wales Theatre Award for Best Female Performance, Evening Standard Award nomination for Best Actress, Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance); Romeo and Juliet (The Sherman Theatre); Under Milk Wood (Theatr Clwyd Cymru); The Shape of Things; Tis a Pity She’s a Whore; See How They Run (Theatre by the Lake); Romeo and Juliet (The Sam Wanamaker Festival).
Television credits include: The Pact, Bang series 2, Call the Midwife, The Left Behind, The Missing 2 (all BBC).
CAT SIMMONS
Theatre includes: Come From Away (West-End); The Lady in the Van (Theatre Royal Bath); One Love (Birmingham Rep) Sweet Charity (Manchester Royal Exchange); Henry V (Regents Park); Midsummer Nights Dream (Lyric Hammersmith); The Witch of Walkeren (Watford Palace Theatre); Sid (Mercury Theatre); Hopelessly Devoted (Paines Plough); Lightening Child and Macbeth (The Globe); Oliver (West-End) Decade (Headlong); And I And Silence (Finborough); Coming Home (Arcola); Been So Long (Young Vic); America Visions of Love (Winter Guests); Aladdin (Old Vic); We Happy Few (Malvern Theatres); Simply Heavenly (Young Vic/National Theatre Studio); Fame! (Cambridge Theatre); Jesus Christ Superstar, Whistle Down the Wind (Really Useful Group); Oliver (NYMT).
Film and TV include: The Holiday, Killing Eve, Ordinary Lies, Vera, Midsummer Murders, Casualty, The Bill, Doctors, Family Affairs, No Angels, Holby City, Girl’s Weekend, Big C, Children’s Ward, Postcode, Life & Lyrics.
Radio and voice recordings include: Bush Tales, Moonshadow, Factory Children, Hanging of Earnest Moon.
MORGAN LLOYD MALCOLM – Playwright
Morgan is a playwright and screenwriter.
Morgan was commissioned by The Globe to write Emilia, which became a hit show in summer 2018 before transferring to the West End in 2019. In 2020 Emilia won 3 Olivier awards including best entertainment and comedy play.
Her new punk musical play Typical Girls, a co-production between Sheffield Theatres and Clean Break, will premiere at Sheffield Crucible in September.
Morgan’s previous plays include Belongings (Hampstead Theatre and Trafalgar Studios/West End) and The Wasp, (Hampstead Theatre and Trafalgar Studios/West End).
Morgan has also co-written several acclaimed immersive site-specific plays with Katie Lyons, produced by Look Left Look Right, including You Once Said Yes, Above and Beyond and Once Upon a Christmas. She was part of the writing team for four of the Lyric Hammersmith’s pantomimes from 2009-2012 and wrote (solo) the Bolton Octagon’s Christmas plays for 2013 and 2014.
She is currently developing a project with Gaumont and Moonage for TV and writing two episodes of a comedy drama for Merman Films. She is also under commission to adapt Emilia, Mum and The Wasp as feature films.
ABIGAIL GRAHAM – Director
Abigail is a freelance Director and Educator.
Future work includes: The Merchant of Venice (The Globe).
From 2013–2017 she was the founding artistic director of OpenWorks Theatre, an organisation dedicated to changing who goes to the theatre by changing who makes it. She was the Lyric Ensemble Director from 2019 to 2020.
Theatre work as a director includes: Earthquakes in London (Guildhall); The Tyler Sisters (Hampstead); Linda (RADA); 31 Hours (The Bunker); Death of a Salesman (Royal and Derngate/UK tour); And Now: The World! (Openworks/UK tour); Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh); Debris (Openworks/Southwark Playhouse); Molly Sweeney (Print Room/ Lyric Belfast/Northern Ireland tour) and Blue Heaven (Finborough).
Directing in community and education includes work at Almeida, Young Vic, Clean Break, The Bush and Synergy.
FRANCESCA MOODY PRODUCTIONS
Francesca Moody Productions commissions, develops and presents brave, entertaining and compelling new theatre. They work with the UK’s leading playwrights and discover and nurture new talent to produce bold, award-winning shows with universal appeal and commercial potential.
Since launching in 2018 the company has been awarded an Olivier, three Scotsman Fringe First’s and produced work in London, New York, on tour across the UK and at the Edinburgh Festival. Recent productions include LEOPARDS by Alys Metcalf (Rose Theatre); SQUARE GO by Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair (Roundabout/595E59 New York/UK Tour); WHITEWASH by Gabriel Bisset-Smith (Soho Theatre) and ANGRY ALAN by Penelope Skinner (Underbelly/Soho Theatre); FMP’s production of Richard’s Gadd’s BABY REINDEER was the Bush Theatre’s fastest selling show in history and is due to transfer to the West-End in co-production with Sonia Friedman Productions.
In 2020 FMP conceived and produced SHEDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL an online live-streamed festival of theatre, comedy and music in lieu of the Edinburgh Fringe, selling over 4500 tickets and raising over £20,000 towards a fund to support the next generation of artists to make it to the Fringe in 2021. Now in it’s second year, SHEDINBURGH ran alongside the 2021 Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August with performances from acts including Harry Hill, Mark Thomas, Deborah Frances-White, Emma Dennis Edwards, Robert Softley Gale and Sabrina Mahfouz.
This Autumn FMP will also present the world premiere of LEOPARDS by Alys Metcalf in a co-production with Rose Theatre Kingston, running 2 – 25 September.
FMP is led by Francesca Moody who is best known as the original producer of the multi-award-winning FLEABAG by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, which she has produced globally on behalf on DryWrite, most recently in London’s West-End at the Wyndhams Theatre when it was also recorded and broadcast by NT Live, playing in cinemas throughout the world. In 2020, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Francesca led and coordinated the Fleabag for Charity campaign, streaming FLEABAG NT live on Amazon and Soho Theatre on Demand, raising over £1,000,000 for charities supporting those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Following this, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Olivia Colman, Francesca established the Theatre Community Fund, raising a further £1,000,000 to support theatrical artists and professionals whose livelihoods and creative futures have been threatened in the wake of Covid-19
Francesca is also the former Producer of British New-Writing theatre company Paines Plough where she produced plays by the UK’s leading playwrights including Dennis Kelly, Duncan Macmillan and Kae Tempest.
THEATRE ROYAL PLYMOUTH
Theatre Royal Plymouth is the principal home of performing arts in the South West, inspiring a lifetime of creativity for audiences, artists and participants throughout Plymouth, the wider region and beyond. We engage and inspire many communities, shaping memorable experiences for people from all backgrounds. We do this by creating and presenting a breadth of shows on the small and large scale, with our sector-leading creative engagement programmes, embracing the vitality of new talent and supporting emerging and established artists, and by collaborating with a range of partners we provide dynamic cultural leadership for the city of Plymouth.
Recent productions and co-productions include I Think We Are Alone by Sally Abbott (with Frantic Assembly), Amsterdam by Maya Arad Yasur (with Actors Touring Company and Orange Tree Theatre), The Strange Tale of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel (with Told By An Idiot), God Of Chaos by Phil Porter, The Kneebone Cadillac by Carl Grose, You Stupid Darkness! by Sam Steiner (with Paines Plough), The Unreturning by Anna Jordan (with Frantic Assembly) and One Under by Winsome Pinnock (with Graeae).
Theatre Royal Plymouth specialises in the production of new plays alongside the presentation of a broad range of theatre - including world class classic and contemporary drama, musicals, opera, ballet and dance in their three performance spaces – The Lyric, The Drum and The Lab. TRP has a strong track record of presenting and producing international work from companies and artists including partnering with Ontroerend Goed, Big In Belgium at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Robert Lepage and the late Yukio Ninagawa. In March 2019 TRP unveiled Messenger, the UK’s largest lost wax bronze sculpture created by the artist Joseph Hillier.
SOHO THEATRE
SOHO THEATRE is London’s most vibrant producer for new theatre, comedy and cabaret. We pursue creative excellence, harnessing an artistic spirit that is based in our new writing roots, the radical ethos of the fringe and the traditions of punk culture and queer performance. We champion voices that challenge from outside of the mainstream, and sometimes from within it too. We value entertainment, accessibility and enjoy a good show. We are a registered charity and social enterprise and our audiences are diverse in age, background and outlook.
Ordinarily our work plays to live audiences of 250,000 audiences a year in our Dean Street venue, at the Edinburgh Fringe and beyond. During our temporary closure due to Covid-19 we re-launched our online platform Soho Theatre On Demand, which hosted the phenomenally successful live recording of Fleabag and recently released the critically acclaimed Typical and Sunrise. We’ve partnered with Amazon Prime Video (UK) for a three-series deal, bringing existing and new comedy shows to the platform. We are also working towards the opening of an exciting second venue, a “local theatre with a national profile” in Walthamstow, currently slated to open in 2022.
Soho Theatre’s board is chaired by Dame Heather Rabbatts DBE and the company is led by Executive Director Mark Godfrey and Creative Director David Luff. @sohotheatre
POPCORN GROUP
Popcorn Group develops and produces innovative and provoking content across film, TV, and theatre. The company recently completed SHE WILL starring Alice Krige, Kota Eberhardt, Malcolm McDowell, and Rupert Everett, which won a Golden Leopard for Best First Film at Locarno Film Festival and is in post-production on DALÍ LAND, its second co-production with Pressman Films, starring Sir Ben Kingsley in the titular role and directed by Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO).
Popcorn Group also partnered on FLEABAG’s West End transfer and co-produced the viral sensation LEADING LADY PARTS for the BBC with Emilia Clarke, Gemma Arterton, Gemma Chan, Catherine Tate, Felicity Jones and Tom Hiddleston, which has amassed over 50million views. In September it will be premiering MUM by Olivier-winning writer Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, a co-production with Francesca Moody Productions, Soho Theatre and Theatre Royal Plymouth.
On the TV side, Popcorn Group is developing its theatre smash hit ANGRY ALAN for TV with NBCUniversal. Additionally, the company teamed up with Lionsgate to develop a TV series entitled A WOMB OF ONE’S OWN.
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