GARETH Farr’s new play, A Child of Science, is clearly a heartfelt project for the writer and director – and by the end it has hauled on the heartstrings of everyone in the audience.

It’s the true story of the development of In Vitro Fertilisation and the years of obstacles that the three pioneers, Patrick Steptoe, Bob Edwards and Jean Purdy, and their courageous volunteer would-be mothers, went through to achieve a successful birth in 1978. Their determination to continue the research has helped thousands of childless couples to become parents – two of them are Gareth Farr and director Matthew Dunster and their wives.

This brilliantly structured play manages to propel a powerful narrative as well as providing scientific, administrative, social, religious, musical and superstitious backgrounds to the years when the two doctors and their eager young nurse persevered with their ground-breaking work. The 11 cast members bring 34 characters onto the stage, and the faces of a choir of women who are or have been involved in IVF treatments are projected onto screens on and off stage as they sing the specially composed music by Genevieve Dawson.

Farr’s writing captures the hopes and frustrations as well as humour, disappointment and misery that follow the three researchers from Cambridge to Oldham, as well as the down-to-earth spirit of the northern women who took part in the experiments. One woman, Margaret Isherwood AKA Patient 38, stayed with the programme for ten years, until she was too old to be a viable carrier. Adelle Leonce’s heartbreaking performance is a high point of the play.

 

The cast also includes Tom Felton as Bob Edwards and Meg Bellamy as Jean Purdy – both well known for their performances as Draco Malfoy and Kate Middleton in Harry Potter and The Crown, but (happily) this is not a play when the celeb status of the cast is important. There’s lots of scientific data, but it is the human stories that carry the story forward, and the company does it brilliantly.

Jamie Glover’s Dr Steptoe embodies the compassionate consultant whose humanity always outweighs the rigid conventions of the establishment.

In recent months, long-time BOV audience members have sometimes wondered what is happening at the theatre. If A Child of Science is part of the answer, they can stop worrying. It’s a clever, engaging and important play, perfectly paced and profoundly felt, without any cloying sentiment.

A Child of Science is on at Bristol Old Vic until 6th July. See it if you can.

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Photographs by Helen Murray