Angelina, the aspiring banker, and AJ, the goalkeeper for a women’s team in the football league, have a lot going on in their lives. Neither of them had planned or expected to be pregnant.
The two women take us through their stories in monologues, speaking in the early section of the play about their home and work life, which becomes much more complicated when they discover they are pregnant.
Angelina (Shannon Hayes) is not only paying rent but, following her mum's redundancy, is covering her mum’s mortgage payments. At work, she is under pressure to make a pitch to clients. She is told the business has got to become more diverse, leading her to privately wish they hadn't heard the word diverse given “they make it sound like a threat."
Things become more worrying when a manager explains to her she is at risk of losing her present post, possibly to be installed in another. Her tension increases with the demands of work colleague Gary, who hasn’t worked out that women aren't the only ones who can get him coffee in the mornings.
AJ is looking forward to making her absent father, whom she hasn’t seen since the age of seven, proud of her football skills and is pleased when her mum says she will watch her play.
Neither have boyfriends who are particularly sympathetic. AJ (Chanel Waddock) can’t even recall the name of the man responsible for her pregnancy, and Angelina is casually told by her boyfriend that he is assuming she is “going to get rid of it.”
This confidently performed, ambitious, thoughtful sixty-minute play is always interesting as it illustrates the difficulties facing a woman becoming unintentionally pregnant.
Although it touches on many serious issues, it swings past them too quickly for us to become emotionally involved or morally outraged. The mood is also consistently mild, even in a brief, potentially nightmarish scene on a football pitch where we hear about bitter lemons.
AJ and Angelina are ambitious, assertive women with mothers who show understanding and boyfriends to whom they seem only loosely attached. There are no surprises in the direction of travel. We know they will survive.
Many women hedged in by poverty, unsafe living conditions, abusive relationships and a state sluggish in its support of women’s rights will not have the resources to do the same. Until such things change, there will continue to be cruel and painful limits on a woman’s right to choose what happens when she becomes pregnant.