Mum Club is a necessarily confronting play and a tribute to Blak motherhood

Phil Erbacher/Griffin Mum Club is a much-needed narrative for our stages.

Contemporary motherhood is at once hyperconnected (so many WhatsApp groups!) and isolating.

This is all the more keenly felt by our lovable protagonist, Sadie (Stephanie Somerville), a young Martu mum from Boorloo/Perth recently moved to Sydney’s Inner West.

Her partner is travelling (a lot) more than she anticipated, her family lives far away, and she is alone navigating the potent – and often contradictory – cocktail of emotions that accompany new motherhood.

There is the overwhelming love for her baby Yaala, stress, sleep deprivation, loneliness, sex dreams, and the unbelievable pain of blocked breast ducts.

She joins a mum club to find community and connection.

The journey is not straightforward.

The mums in the group are white, and they seem to be handling things much better than her.

Eventually their performative facade that “everything is fine” comes thrillingly – and hilariously – undone.

Racism and sexism in Australia Written by Jorjia Gillis and directed by Ian Michael, Mum Club begins post-Yaala’s birth, with Sadie lying with her legs in stirrups on a gurney while medical staff in scrubs examine her.

We witness a medical system that is hostile and judgemental towards an Aboriginal woman’s birth experience, demonstrated by the overzealous and entitled ignorance of the midwife (Alex Malone) and complete apathy of her trainee (Zarif).

The tone is satirical and comedic, but an unnerving combination of fear-based communication and racism underpins the medical staff’s interaction with Sadie.

This sets the stage for a production that faces confronting truths about racism and sexism in Australia and the way they intersect for Aboriginal women.

The active-wear-clad white women at the mum club are insufferable.