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Chunky Jewellery

 
Mark Harding Review by Mark Harding 4 Published: 14 Aug 2025 Assembly Rooms Show Dates: 1 Aug 2025-24 Aug 2025

The play opens with two friends, Natasha and Judith, discussing ideas for putting on a show – the show we are watching. That may sound like a novice fringe piece, but Chunky Jewellery is far from self-indulgent, and very far from unskilled: like the best theatre, it performs the alchemy of turning the specific into the universal.

Presented with such realistic, unvarnished truth, and with no easy answers

There is plenty of comedy as Natasha and Jude try out different ideas (all brilliantly performed) such as live looping Ed Sheeran-style, and 60s songs like Then He Kissed Me. But these are abandoned for either comic reasons (Jude did not meet her bloke across a dance hall but on Tinder) or because they develop into areas that are too painful (“too much of a downer”) for the show they have in mind.

There seems to be no limit to the talents of the performers – there is clowning, dancing, singing, comedy – or touching the heart with pity and quiet sadness as the stories of the friends’ turbulent year are revealed.

The stories explore the lives of women, particularly the joys and, in this specific year for these women, the pain of being a daughter and a mother: the stresses of bringing up children alone; the sorrows of break-ups; finding out you are pregnant just as your mother is dying; the ache of disappointed and failed relationships; the guilt of feeling you are failing your children or disappointing your parents.

Often, even the moments of greatest solidarity between the two friends hide individual problems and pain.

This sounds gloomier than the show is, because it is mixed with comedy, friendship and the joy of performance. But it is refreshing to see the lives of mothers – the good and the bad – presented with such realistic, unvarnished truth, and with no easy answers.

A key scene is when the friends chat about Natasha's present of a chunky necklace – the sort of gift mothers receive as they approach middle age. The final scene turns those presents given by loved ones into a ceremony that movingly celebrates the multitude of mothers’ roles, and the strength found to meet them.

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The Blurb:

Two friends, one year, two births, a death, 18 bursts of laughter, 34,000 tears (each) and one piece of chunky jewellery. It was a year to forget but instead Natasha and Jude turned it into a show. This is a comedy that bites. An achingly joyous celebration of sisterhood, taking the audience on an emotional rollercoaster with open-hearted, brutal honesty. These uncompromising performers team up with Olivier Award-nominated Ben Duke of Lost Dog to create this unflinchingly honest, human and hilarious show. 'Genuinely moving and life affirming' **** (Herald). MadeInScotlandShowcase.com