BINGLEY Little Theatre opens its 75th season with a powerful play about four young unmarried women forced to give up their babies for adoption.
Set in the 1960s, Be My Baby, by Amanda Whittington centres on the plight of young women sent to Church-run mother and baby homes.
Discovering that Mary is seven months pregnant, her mother is determined that no-one, including her husband, will find out. Forced to leave her job in a bank and her boyfriend, Mary is packed off, with only her Dansette and records for comfort.
In the home she and three other girls, Norma, Queenie and Dolores, are drawn together by their love of Sixties girl group songs, and they each imagine a different future while listening and singing along to records. The play is set against popular girl group songs of the 60s.
Director Rosemary Grainger says: “As we get to know the girls, we appreciate their zest for life and dreams, while realising, as they do eventually, that these will be shattered when they’re forced to accept their situation. While it has wry humour, this is a reflective, heart-wrenching play.”
Staging a play with four young female characters offered opportunities for recent members of Kaleidoscope, BLT’s youth theatre company. Playing Mary is Genevieve Gaul, while Jessica Chewins is Queenie, Alicia Rhodes is Dolores and Charlotte Wetherall is Norma.
* Be My Baby runs at Bingley Arts Centre from September 5-10. Call (01274) 567983 or visit bingleyartscentre.co.uk
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