Ripening is written and directed by Jayde Kirchert, based on her own experiences of pregnancy, birth and negotiating her family – and the Western medical system throughout the process. It is a heartfelt piece, focusing on Lea (Veronica Thomas), gorgeously pregnant, and her dealings with a stitched-up, fearful, middle-class mother; a sister-in-law who offers alternative remedies, of which more later; a female doctor who represents the less impressive attitudes of allopathic practitioners – the wishes of the expectant mother come way down the list of the lawsuit-wary doctor – and a midwife running no holds barred info sessions on what you need to know as the day approaches, and during the event itself. As anyone who has given birth can tell you, it ain’t glamourous!
Good things first: it’s great to see a work involving all women creatives and performers, especially about probably the ultimate female subject. Thomas has a lovely stage presence, although I would have liked more dynamics, short-fuse irritability and panic vocally when she is assailed by voices in her head warning, catastrophising, ridiculing, dismissing. The other three actors supply these voices behind long translucent drops, with sound effects that would work better if balanced under the voices so they can be heard more clearly, especially as we can’t see their faces.
Emily Carr is particularly effective as the midwife, relaxed, brutally honest, including the audience in her info sessions. Ana Mitsikas plays the double roles of Doctor and Mary, Lea’s mother, both taut with convention and past mistakes. Asha Khamis plays both Grace, Lea’s sister-in-law, and Ali, another midwife session attendee. It might have been interesting to show more of this character’s life and circumstances – her solo journey contrasted with Lea’s more comfortable, supported life.
Having applauded the all-female production, the never-seen men in the story – Lea’s apparently devoted but never quite putting her first partner, who doesn’t seem to get there in time; Mary’s buried in business husband; the only-heard grandmother’s sexual assault – are all lacking or negative. One good example would be encouraging for the people who may be seeing this show and contemplating having a baby. Men get a bad enough rap these days as it is.
The story is set in Lea’s dealings with the Western model – pregnancy and birth as an industry, the mother as, ideally, compliant and unquestioning. Lea keeps saying she wants as natural a birth experience as possible – no epidural, no inducing etc – closer, we assume to the ways women have birthed babies for millennia, long before the medicalisation of childbirth from the 20th Century onwards. When Grace brings lemons for Lea to use ‘to move things along’ and offers raspberry leaf tea – both amongst hundreds of well-known natural remedies – these are both referred to, apologetically, as ‘hippy’, with its now slightly derogatory connotations – it has become a word weaponised against anything alternative to orthodoxy. Why wouldn’t Grace make the point about the age-old honoured uses without denigrating. Wouldn’t someone wanting a more natural process be embracing the drug-free, more natural options?
Read: Theatre review: How To Hold A Sign, The Butterfly Club
There are often challenges with writers directing their own work, and they are present here. A different director would have brought a more stringent assessment of the script which is repetitive, and could do with some cutting.
Quibbles aside, Ripening gets many things right about the enormity of giving birth, when there is only the present moment, and Citizen Theatre is to be congratulated on this celebration of the primary, intensely female, human story.
Ripening
Citizen Theatre
Gasworks Arts Park, Albert Park
Written and directed by Jayde Kirchert
Set Designer: Sarah Tulloch
Lighting Designer: Clare Springett
Costume Designer: Aislinn Naughton
Sound Designer: Imogen Cygler
Assistant Director: Gabrielle Ward
Stage Manager: Terri Steer
Cast: Veronica Thomas (Lea); Ana Mitsikas (Mary / Doctor); Emily Carr (Midwife/ Others); Asha Khamis (Grace / Ali
Tickets: #30 – $45
Ripening plays Gasworks’ Studio Theatre from 28-31 May 2025.
