A Child of Science: The Crown’s Meg Bellamy shines in an inspiring dramatision of the birth of IVF
Sometimes theatre does a good deed when it simply tells a story that should be more widely known. We’re not far off the 50th anniversary of the first successful birth following IVF treatment – that of Louise Brown at Oldham General Hospital in July 1978 – which ushered in a new era for humanity: since then the procedure has enabled the birth of more than 12 million babies worldwide. Yet the dogged, inspiring endeavour that went into that breakthrough remains under-sung.
A Child of Science – by the actor and playwright Gareth Farr – centres the candidates for applause: physiologist Robert Edwards, obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy. None of the trio are still with us; Edwards (awarded a Nobel Prize) was the last to go, in 2013. Their achievement is traced in an unsensational fashion, albeit a bustling one in Matthew Dunster’s production, with its kaleidoscopic design of moving glass panels and stirring (recorded) volunteer choir made up of those with an IVF-related backstory.
Where recent theatrical celebrations of health path-finders – notably NHS ‘founding father’ Nye Bevan, at the National, and Doctor Semmelweis, the Hungarian seer of sanitisation, which also premiered in Bristol – have traded on the archetype of the complex, indomitable personality, Farr honourably reckons with the biographical reality that his specimens of medical heroism were text-book unassuming, self-effacing types.
Indeed, our earliest impressions of Edwards (Tom Felton of Harry Potter fame) is of a man who can barely tear himself away from squinting into a microscope. “It’s very difficult to retrieve an egg from a female mouse” is not a strong chat-up line, as Bebe Sanders’ Ruth Fowler – his future wife – dryly notes. But while she’s curiously smitten she draws the line at being his helpmeet, having her own pioneering furrow to plough. Into that role, and the chauvinist environment, steps Purdy, and with it the evening’s big concession to glamour; she’s played by Meg Bellamy, who got her break playing Kate Middleton in The Crown and now makes her stage debut aged 21 with a watchful assurance and graceful allure that confirms her star-potential.
Besides that, there are enough fits and starts, push-backs and set-backs, to keep the casual viewer gripped. The excited glimpse of the first human egg matured outside the body is attended by an tragicomic bungle, and something akin to subterfuge is required to obtain the necessary ovarian tissue early on, with the authorities often obstructive. The first half ends with Bob Edwards approaching Jamie Glover’s greying, good-eggish Steptoe in 1969 to join forces.
Thereafter the ramifications of their project get more fully fleshed out. There’s the callous intrusion of reporters, with concern about the ethical implications even incorporating a cameo from the Pope. We could do with more chewing over that, and the ending, for all its deserved triumphalism, feels too abrupt, the Brown family’s pivotal contribution almost a footnote. Still, what comes across forcefully is the bravery and anguish of the trial participants, Adelle Leonce heart-rending as Margaret from Huddersfield – Patient 38 – who names all her lost offspring and then sobbingly pleads “I want a baby”.
Until July 6. Tickets: 0117 987 7877; bristololdvic.org.uk
