Imrie and Greig crackle in tale of motherhood and loss

The electric chemistry in Backstroke’ captures the pain of missing someone before they’re gone. But Ella Duggan wonders at a piece that doesn’t quite know what it’s about

- Ella Duggan

"Swimming pools do have a Pavlovian effect on people's bladders," Celia Imrie chuckles to a not quite six-year-old Tamsin Greig, as the two actors float about an imaginary pool in the intimate space of the Donmar Warehouse.

The Donmar presents the world premiere of Anna Mackmin’s semi-autobiographical play about motherhood, circling a contentious and reversed parent-child relationship through the ages. Bo, played by sitcom star Greig, rushes to her mother’s hospital side amid her dementia diagnosis and a series of strokes. Doyenne of stage and screen, Imrie plays Beth as a hippie Miss Havisham, with half-grey, half-pink hair and bohemian flares riddled with holes.

Through a scattershot mix of pre-taped and performed memories, we learn how this topsy-turvy relationship came to be, with Greig playing Bo in memories that go back as far as when she is six years old. Beth, meanwhile, is fabulously bohemian, with a narcissistic, anxiously attached nature that fosters both a passionate child and a cynical adult in her daughter. Beth’s preoccupation with her own liberation leaves Bo without the time or space to be a child.