Not Your Super Woman- review

We live in a world where Letitia Wright Black Panthers sister/ successor of the Black Panther mantle and Goulda Rosheuvel Queen Charlotte from Bridgerton and the best prequel  (in my opinion) Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Can come together and portray one of the realest mother and daughter dynamic I have ever seen on stage. 

Enter Joyce and her daughter Erica sitting in airport waiting for their flight to Guyana to scatter Joyce's mothers ashes. The generation ga is loud from the jump, Joyce getting short at the workers who are just doing their job and Erica embarrassed and apologetic on behalf of her mother. 

Before I get into the actual storyline which Emma Dennis Edwards did a phenomenal job with. I just want to get into how important it felt to see a Black mother and daughter dynamic on stage. There is so much historical trauma between Jove and Erica that  mirrored the one with my own mother. Despite not being of Guyanese or Caribbean heritage I remember the polite distance and compassion I felt between my mother and I when my grandma passed. We were both just desperately tyring to do what felt right to honour a woman we both loved but had different experiences of. 

Rosheuvel brings a weighted lightness to the character of Joyce stern, fixed posture but spirited by nature. Battling what her mother taught her, her own coping mechanisms and how much of that she wants to pass onto her daughter. What happens when your own mother who was once a little girl watches you turn into a more  fearless version of themselves that they'd hoped to be? 

Wright comes in strong as Rosheuvel's walking reminder of exactly this. Erica is deeply frustrated by her own mothers inability to be introspective. Mentioning techniques that she learnt in therapy in a bid to help her mum which is only met with dismissal and quick witted one liners. 

What I loved as much as the one drunken night in a bar in Guyana where the ladies let their hair down to the sound of soca; was how similar the two really were. Like mother like daughter they both carried so much on their own not knowing how to lean on the other for support. The trip to Guyana proved to be healing in more ways than one. 

They went to scatter the ashes but left with a stronger bond the two awkward women at the airport who hadn't spoken in weeks was gone and you could feel the distance between them close. Shout out to the set design quite literally making them sit next to each other and not leave a space in between like in the opening scene. 

An exploration of culture, trauma and the complicated yet loving dynamic between a mother and daughter. 

Not Your Superwoman is at the Bush Theatre till 1 November.