My Mum's a Twat

Anoushka Warden seems to have had a pretty idyllic early childhood with her mother – hot drinks delivered to her bed every morning, playing dress up with her mum’s glamorous clothes and goodnight kisses every bedtime. But this all changed when her mum joined a cult and became involved with the ‘moron,’ Warden’s new stepfather.

The cult in question – the absurdly named ‘The Heal Thyself Centre for Self-Realisation and Transcendence’ – controls every aspect of her mum’s life. At the same time the ‘moron’ is physically abusive, and fails to connect with his stepdaughter in any meaningful way. Their home is slowly being taken over by cult activities with the inclusion of a meditation room and a healing room. Warden’s mum appears to give her life over to the cult and asks the guru for permission and guidance for every aspect of her and her family’s lives. Christmases and birthdays are forgotten or not prioritised and her mum seems to become increasingly absent from her daughter’s life.

At the age of twelve her mother moves to Canada to set up a new centre for the cult. Warden elects to stay with her father in Devon spending only the holidays with her mother in Canada. At this point of the show her mother almost entirely disappears from the narrative. Instead, the second half is devoted Warden’s partying and illegal teenage hijinks with her new Canadian friends.

Warden may not be a professional actress, but she is engaging and keeps the audience’s attention with a deft delivery of the scattered jokes and funny asides. She also has a deep love of music that she demonstrates throughout the show, even rapping along to a track at one point. It would have been interesting if this coping mechanism had been explored in greater detail. As is, the changes to background music throughout the show felt underwhelming and added little.

My Mum’s a Twat promises a lot more than is delivered. The all-evil cult is relegated to a vaguely malignant background, and the examination of the relationship between mum and daughter isn’t explored in any meaningful way.