My Mother Said I Never Should
by Charlotte Keatley

Charlotte Keatley's first main stage play My Mother Said I Never Should explores the difficult relationships between mothers and daughters, moving the play back and forth between the lives of four generations of women—their desire to love and be loved, their expectations and choices, all set against the backdrop of enormous social change during the twentieth century.

The play revolves around Jackie's unexpected pregnancy and her decision to give the baby to her mother to raise.

The drama revolves around the consequences of this secret and each women's opinion on it.

The stage set is minimilistic and the drama incorporates deliberately unrealistic situations to explore deeply internal issues, such as the wasteland scenes where all the characters revert back to themselves as children.

The play has been translated into twenty-two languages and in 2000 it was chosen by the Royal National Theatre as one of the "Hundred Significant Plays of the Twentieth Century".

Commentary and notes by Charlotte Keatley.