Kindling – Park Theatre

Last Updated on November 7, 2025

“If they loved me and I loved them, surely they will love each other” – or The One Where Five Perimenopausal Women Get Lost In a Forest

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

There is an old joke that every woman should find a man who is a good cook; a man who is a good listener; a man who is a good lover; and a man who is good at DIY; and it is most important that these four men should never meet.  Similarly, I think it’s safe to say that most women have a “work” friend, an “old” friend, a “uni” friend, a “family friend” and a “mum” friend, and the basic premise of Kindling will have you asking yourself whether it is wise for these friends ever to meet – particularly if you are no longer there to mediate between them.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kindling features an all-female cast as well as creatives.  All the characters are women; the play is written by Sarah Rickman (who also appears as Rose); directed by Emma Gersch;  produced by Ciara Pouncett (whose producing credits include four world premiere theatre productions as well as Eastenders for the BBC and Smothered for Sky, and who also appears as Sue); and the set was designed by Abi Grove.  Kindling is Sarah Rickman’s second play.  Her debut play, The Existence Formula, was performed at what is now the Seven Dials Playhouse before moving to the New York City Fringe and seems to share many features with Kindling in that it is more of a musing on modern adult life than a dramatic storyline; and has the immersive, intimate and sometimes slightly chaotic feel associated with fringe theatre and small venues.  Rickman has long felt that the demographic of perimenopausal and menopausal women has been underrepresented on stage, and she wanted to see more of their stories depicted there.  After the Covid-19 pandemic, she and Ciara Pouncett formed Ladybird Productions, a female-led production company that aims to empower and give creative theatre opportunities to women, particularly those over 35.

Kindling’s plot is simple: Mei (who only appears as a disembodied voice) has died of cancer and as her last wish, she has asked her five closest friends to camp out overnight in a Welsh forest to scatter her ashes. Five perimenopausal women who barely know each other head into a forest with no mobile signal, no map, a lot of wine and an urn of ashes – what could go wrong? As it turns out, quite a lot. The characters are finely drawn and relatable in that almost everyone can identify with one of them, or can identify a friend who matches a character. Rose (Sarah Rickman) is the sweet but ditzy one; Sue (Ciara Pouncett) is a City girl married to her job; Jasmine (Rendah Beshoori) is the perfectly groomed mum who arrives in the woods with a Louis Vuitton bag; Jules (Stacey Abalogun) is the pragmatic tomboy; and Cathy (Scarlett Alice Johnson) is the self-deprecating peacemaker. And as soon as the characters walk on stage, you can see them falling into their expected roles within the group – ditzy Rose has brought the wrong map and forgotten a tent; Jules has brought (and can assemble) her own camping chair; Sue has a bag full of wine – but lack of phone signal and maps means they are almost immediately lost and need to set up a makeshift camp, setting the scene for the rest of the dramatic action.

What starts out as a bonding opportunity to share their grief and celebrate their friend’s life does not take long to descend into chaos and farce.   In no particular order, the women lose their way, their shelter, their temper, their sobriety and their inhibitions. After a storm soaks them and their food supplies (nothing less attractive than a limp baguette!), they decide to make camp where they are, in their one hopelessly undersized tent, and break out the drinks. Fuelled by the discomfort of their situation and copious amounts of wine, it does not take long for recriminations to fly, old resentments to bubble over and tempers to run high. But as the women compare notes on Mei’s amusing but sometimes unkind nicknames for each of them, they slowly start to bond over shared affront at the names and find common ground in difficult family relationships, children (or lack of!), being an older woman, and the rollercoaster that is perimenopause. By the time they are dancing and singing drunkenly around the campfire to the karaoke classic Living on a Prayer, they (and the audience) realise that there is more that unites them than divides them, and the ending of Kindling is ultimately warm and hopeful.

(Peri)menopause, long a topic that was not openly discussed even between women, is having something of a moment thanks to social media and the efforts of vocal advocates such as Davina McCall, Diane Danzebrink and Dr Louise Newson who have demystified and openly discussed the topic.  Even ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to put on a comedic play that references menopause symptoms, HRT patches, vibrators and oestrogen gel – yet Kindling not only makes mention of all of these but makes them central to the narrative. A play featuring older women discussing a completely natural life stage and its challenges without shame or reticence marks an encouraging step towards changing the way menopausal and perimenopausal women are portrayed and viewed.  

The set design for Kindling is basic but works wonderfully in this intimate 90-seat venue.  The audience is so close to the woodchips and cut logs on the stage that you can smell the wood and feel as if you are actually in a forest with the characters. The basic staging also gives the piece an endearingly anarchic “fringe” production feel. The characters themselves are very keenly observed, and all the performances are excellent – I particularly enjoyed Scarlett Alice Johnson’s Cathy, but could not fault any of them. The script is tight and the dialogue realistic, and there are some truly funny lines – “well cover me in patches and call me Davina” was my personal favourite. Where I felt there was some work to be done was tightening up the plot a bit – there were some “twists” to the plot that were either so obvious as to not be surprising, or seemed to be parachuted in to create a diversion rather than truly advance the narrative (the ending of the first act is an example).  But these are small quibbles – overall it is enjoyable, relatable and witty.

Will you leave with dramatic new insights into the human condition? Probably not. But it is a warm and funny piece which puts middle-aged women centre stage – the focus is on the women as individual characters, not defined by their relationships with men.  The play seeks to challenge the idea that women become invisible and irrelevant as they get older, and for this alone, Kindling is well worth seeing.

There are also a number of free post-show events after selected performances, including “Making Menopause Matter” with Claire Phipps on 6 Nov; “No Filter: Conversations About Menopause and Cancer” with Dani Barrington on 10 Nov; and “Making Menopause Matter” with Diane Danzebrink on 14 Nov.

Kindling runs at the Park Theatre from 27 October to 15 November – tickets available here.

Park Theatre
Clifton Terrace,
Finsbury Park
LONDON
N4 3JP

Box office Tel. 020 7870 6876

Looking for something different? Check our review of The Unbelievers, currently running at the Royal Court Theatre.