Wish You Weren’t Here by Katie Radford. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D to 2 March 2024. 4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Touching, funny and ultimately uplifting encounter between mother and child.”

Lorna,, a single mother who works in a call centre, has taken her sixteenyear old daughter Mila for a holiday in Scarborough, a resort where in the past they have had happy holidays. Mila is not having a good time, worried about her exam results, embarrassed by her would be swinging mother – Lorna is only 32 and Mila’s father was black, which only adds to her problems. She sees more of her father than her mother and loved her grandmother, who died recently. It is an awkward weekend in their not quite with a seaview boarding house – a Four in a Bed sort of place – where Mila finds public hairs on the sheets. They go out, Lorna does her best to get the girl to enjoy it all but her behaviour embarrasses her daughter no end. Then we discover that Mila has brought her grandmother’s ashes along in a plastic sandwich bag and wants to scatter them from the big dipper, a place where they had all be happy, which we see as one screens at the back of the stage scenes from the past – both are forever on their phones, forever taking photographs to mark the moment. Lorna is aghast. But there is a revelation to come which ultimately sets this difficult relationship on a new and better track. Directed by Rob Watt, this is a co-production by A Theatre Centre and Sheffield Theatres, and the performances of Eleanor Henderson and Olivia Pentelow as mother and daughter are faultless – Henderson so anxious to have a good time, just the wrong sort for her teenage daughter, Pentelow thin of skin and embarrassed by her behaviour. Redford has a way with words. The piece lasts for about an hour and is made up of a series of short scenes moving from one issue to another which gives it a slightly scrappy feel – the truth behind the title takes time to be disclosed and how it is resolved is perhaps a mite perfunctory. But the truth is worth discovering and so is the way it brings mother and daughter closer together.

Cast

Eleanor Henderson – Lorna.

Olivia Pentelow – Mila.

Nan (video recording) – Helena Lymbery.

Courtney (Audio recording) – Eleanor May Blackburn.

Creatives

Director – Rob Watt.

Lighting Designer – Jess Brigham.

Sound Designer – tom Sharkett.

Designer – Bethany Wells.

Movement Director – Kiren Virdee.

Video Designer – Rob Watt.