Guest Blog: My husband's pregnant!

Rosalind Adler

On a set which feels a lot like a dolls' house, my new play Sympathy Pains, which runs at the gorgeous new Park Theatre from tomorrow evening (3rd September), is a short and sweet comedy drama about a man who believes he is with child... it’s also about the crisis in the reversal of power between men and women today.

Guy and Chris have been married for thirty years. He's a writer who works from home in his dressing gown and jeans, trying in vain to recreate the success he had with his one-hit wonder FRUITGUMS twenty years ago. Chris, his wife, works on a high floor in a shiny, big office and outearns him by squillions. She has become the husband she thought she’d marry and Guy has got used to feeling like a failure: useless, pointless, purse-whipped. At his lowest ebb, when all seems lost, a miracle happens and Guy finds himself - he is quite certain - with new life growing inside him. (I have to tell you here that Crispin Letts who plays Guy can do extraordinary things with his tummy - it's worth coming along just for that!)

Crispin Letts

The play is the story of how badly Guy needs to hang on to his delusion, what that does to their marriage (which is already shaky) and how - if he can let go of his precious pregnancy - he and Chris can negotiate a way forward.

I'm fascinated by middle-aged pregnancy and also by the growing number of women who are outearning their husbands: what that's like for the couples involved and how men and women cope with sometimes very un-PC reactions to their situation. I knew I wanted to marry those two ideas and the idea struck me that if a middle-aged MAN were pregnant - because that was his desperate response to feeling overlooked and rejected - I might have something. I then began looking online and was very interested to read about a sailor who presented with classic phantom pregnancy symptoms in 1958. He'd been feeling totally insignificant and now his life was miraculously imbued with meaning: he was no longer despised but chosen, special, Messianic. 

Rosalind's wedding

I also very much enjoy writing about marriage; I like examining couples in crisis and trying to find a happy ending for them. I'm an optimist and got married in real life (for the second time) a few weeks ago, just before we took Sympathy Pains to Edinburgh, where it had a short (we had to fit in a honeymoon...!) run at the Pleasance Dome.

I've been at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (at the Pleasance) for the last three years. I've written two one-woman multi-character plays and I took LOL, which is about internet dating, up to Edinburgh in 2011 and JUBILATE! - about a smug vicar's wife who knows what's best for everyone ... oh dear - in 2012, where it was a Times Critics' Choice.

This year, writing a play for TWO performers has been a joy. I tried out a staged reading of Sympathy Pains at Soho Theatre earlier this year (I co-produce The Comedy Project there) and listened to some incredibly useful and encouraging industry feedback. On the back of that, I redrafted the play several times, emerging with the current version of the fully-produced play: a genuinely helpful process. And we've had a lovely response in Edinburgh: Pick of the Fringe 2013 called it "so accurate....beautifully acted." 

I love doing my one-woman shows - but it's just so nice to have someone else to play with on stage! And Crispin Letts is not just a gifted, funny and reliable actor but also a thoroughly nice bloke.

I'm looking forward to a happy run at Park Theatre and there are already possible future plans for Sympathy Pains. We'll see. What I know for sure is that one day in the not too distant future, I'll be sittting on my sofa in Ealing, a pile of clean, white A4 paper on my knee and a blue biro in my hand, ready to conceive the embryo of my next play.......

Rosalind Adler

contact@westendframe.com

Rosalind has written and performs in two one-woman, multi-character plays: JUBILATE! was a Times Critics' Choice at Pleasance Edinburgh in 2012, which is where SYMPATHY PAINS premiered in 2013. LOL has also won awards and ran at Pleasance Edinburgh in 2011 and at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2010. Recent work includes BRIAN GITTINS (Channel 4 - 4Funnies) and Lenny Abrahamson's film FRANK, which stars Domhnall Gleeson and Michael Fassbender.

Sympathy Pains runs at the Park Theatre (PARK90) between 3rd-22nd September 2013.

Please visit www.parktheatre.co.uk for further information and tickets.

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