'In its revelation of mother-daughter emotions over the years, the play
is without rivals. It is a classic' The Times
'This is a landmark play. The theatrical equivalent of breaking the
four-minute mile; like Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, pointing the way
for the next generation of playwrights in form and content' Guardian
Charlotte Keatley's first main stage play My Mother Said I Never Should
was premiered in 1987 at Contact, Manchester, and in 1989 at the Royal
Court Theatre, London. It has been translated into twenty-two languages
and is performed across the world. The play moves back and forth through
the lives of four women, and sets the enormous social changes of the
twentieth century against the desire to love and to be loved. In 2000 it
was chosen by the Royal National Theatre as one of the hundred
Significant Plays of the Twentieth Century.
Commentary and notes by Charlotte Keatley.