Adoption and the emotional turmoil that surrounds it form the heart of YOU, Mark Wilson’s beautifully tender and deeply affecting new play. It is a story that explores not only the act of giving up a child but also the lingering echoes of love, loss, guilt, and identity that reverberate through the lives of everyone involved.
Sarita Plowman delivers a superbly nuanced performance as Kathleen, a young woman whose innocence and vulnerability are painfully exposed in the face of societal judgment and familial control. Wilson’s writing allows Plowman to move fluidly between time periods, embodying both the wide-eyed, teenage Kathleen and her older, world-wearier self, reflecting on a decision that changed the course of her life.
We first meet Kathleen as a 15-year-old, swept up in the thrill of discos, boys, and youthful possibility. Plowman captures this with guileless charm and naivety. It’s easy to be drawn into her world of adolescent excitement and inexperience. One might question, however, the plausibility of this story being set ‘thirty years ago’, given that the tone and social attitudes toward sex and teenage pregnancy feel more akin to the 1960s than the 1990s. In London, at least, young people were already far more streetwise and open discussions about sex were commonplace. Still, Wilson’s script suggests a smaller northern town – pre-internet, more insulated, and steeped in traditional values, which helps reconcile that apparent temporal dissonance.
Kathleen’s mother, also played by Plowman, is a formidable presence: controlling, proud, and driven by a deep-seated fear of social shame. Her insistence that Kathleen give up her baby is portrayed with cold conviction. Meanwhile, her husband, portrayed by James Dangerfield, is a weak, deferential man, unable to stand up to his wife or protect his daughter. The moment when Kathleen realises she has lost not only her child but also the trust and closeness of her father is quietly devastating.
Both Plowman and Dangerfield take on multiple roles throughout the production, each character distinct and well-drawn. Their ability to shift seamlessly between personas through subtle changes in accent, gesture, and physicality is impressive and essential to the play’s emotional breadth.
The story expands to include the couple who adopt baby Charlie, a privileged doctor and her husband. Plowman plays the doctor with sensitivity and restraint, revealing the hidden anxieties that come with motherhood through adoption. Her internal struggle, the fear of inadequacy, the haunting thought that she is merely a custodian of another woman’s child, is portrayed with heartbreaking honesty. Wilson’s writing doesn’t moralise; instead, it lays bare the pain and love on both sides, allowing the audience to feel compassion for everyone caught in this impossible situation.
The production’s only real shortcoming lies in its staging. The set feels sparse, perhaps overly so, lacking the imaginative spark that might have elevated the emotional world of the play. Similarly, the lighting design, though occasionally effective, can be distracting, particularly if, as I discovered, you find yourself seated directly in front of one of the horizontal beams and are intermittently blinded.
Despite these minor flaws, YOU remains a profoundly moving piece of theatre. Its strength lies in its honesty, in its refusal to simplify or sentimentalise the complex web of emotions that adoption entails. Mark Wilson’s writing is both lyrical and raw, and in the hands of two deeply committed performers, it achieves moments of quiet, breathtaking power.
A beautiful, heartrending tale, superbly acted and wholly deserving of a wider audience, ideally in a larger and more imaginative space.
Review by Bernadette Lintunen
A Mother waits to meet the adult son she was forced to give up for adoption when she was fifteen.
Many women and their families still await an official apology from the government for the state’s role in the practice of forced adoptions throughout the last century. YOU serves as a voice for a generation of women, children and wider families who endured such experiences behind closed doors, in silence and in the shadows of our recent history.
Cast: James Dangerfield and Sarita Plowman
Writer: Mark Wilson
Director: Rosie Snell
Original Score by Andrew Stuart-Buttle
YOU
Sevan Dials Playhouse
11 to 15 November 2025
