My Mum’s a Twat, Royal Court review ★★★★★

It’s nothing new to hear a teenager bemoan: ‘My Mum’s A Twat’. But in Anoushka Warden’s punchily-titled debut play the protagonist is more than justified in her adolescent agner.

The unnamed girl, played by Patsy Ferran, shares her extraordinary story of growing up around the edges of a cult. In a room filled with cassette tapes, troll dolls and audience members perched on beanbags around the edges of the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, she launches into an 80 minute monologue.

We hear how an affectionate, ambitious mother gets lost to The Healing Centre. Ferran delivers zinging one-liners and scathing put downs with a wide-eyed animation and the emotive volatility of a young teenager. The oddity of the hippy sect propels the story, but comedy and tenderness come from altogether more normal challenges of growing up.

There’s striking honesty and depth to this portrait of a mother-daughter relationship, and the devastating effects of abandonment are balanced by the buoyant force of adolescent curiosity.

During the course of the one-woman play we see our narrator grow from a lonely 8 year-old who misses mum’s goodnight kisses, to a wily, angry teen dazzled by drugs and house-parties. But the same spark of resilience and quirky humour remains.

My Mum’s A Twat is Warden’s first professional play; though she's no stranger to new writing, having managed press and publicity at the Royal Court for three years. This play is based on her own upbringing, veiled by hazy memories and fictional embellishments, and she tells it with vigour and courage.

If you’re not squeamish about swear words, it’s an especially invigorating show for older teens (and not just to show them that their own parents probably aren’t so bad).