Amy's View (Nottingham)

"I think this is more a women's play than a man's," I overheard in the interval and few would disagree although there is plenty here to draw in audiences of both sexes. Writer David Hare wrote that Amy’s View was intended "to put modern women’s lives on the stage in a way which I hope women might recognise" and succeeds as credible portrait of life at the end of the 20th century.

Covering a sixteen year span this mini-saga, set against the background of the Thatcher years, charts the increasingly brittle relationship between West End actress Esme and her daughter Amy. The catalyst is Amy’s new boyfriend Dominic, a would-be film director starting to make a name for himself as a movie journalist. To him the theatre is elitist and "dead"; film the new media with relevance to the modern audience. His uncompromising and smug self-belief irritates Esme who views the stage as the superior art form.

As Dominic’s star rises Esme’s is eclipsed and the mother-daughter relationship becomes strained to breaking point when she plunges millions of pounds into debt as a bankrupted "Lloyd’s name". A fine cast, led by Julia Watson as Esme and Kirsty Besterman as Amy, draw the audience in to this wordy and thought-provoking play with only Ryan Early’s uncharismatic Dominic stretching credibility as "the most popular presenter on TV".

- Nick Brunger