Attachment review: Cranney's adoption play sprints
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- Julia Cranney's monologue "Attachment" centres on Mat (played by Paislie Reid) and her partner James, who enter early permanence — a pathway where babies and toddlers are placed with prospective adopters who first foster them, with the child potentially returning to birth family.
- The 70-minute play tracks Mat from an isolated pharmacy worker who isn't keen on kids to a mother bonding with James's daughter, but the reviewer says major life events arrive in such quick succession that the script runs out of time to build a clear portrait of her world.
- Reid's delivery stays at a single pace, with pauses landing line after line, and director Kate Treadell has her circle the perimeter of the stage while white confetti falls between scenes — a metaphor for the messy parts of life Mat tries to control.
- Cranney draws clear lines between Mat's difficult childhood, her relationship with her nan, and the kind of mother she becomes, with Mat herself comparing the adoption process to "training for a marathon."
- The review concludes that the production shows promise in presenting a system capable of building long-term families while crushing resilience, but argues a sharper narrative is needed for those themes to truly land.
Why it matters: The piece adds to a thin mainstream conversation about early-permanence fostering — a pathway where children can still be returned to birth parents — but its rushed 70-minute structure means the emotional weight of that uncertainty never fully registers for audiences, limiting the play's reach as advocacy through theatre.
