In vitro fertilisation has become such a fact of life today that it’s hard to imagine how horrifying the idea seemed half a century ago, invoking a Boschian future of Frankenbabies and the upending of God’s will. The shocking opening of A Child of Science, Gareth Farr’s new play at Bristol Old Vic, turns this horror on its head with the image of a woman convulsing on a gurney after a botched backstreet abortion.
We’re in the 1950s, when reproductive rights were controlled by doctors under instruction from an old, male establishment. While the kindly gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe (Jamie Glover) manages the casualties on the wards, haunted by the ghosts of dead mothers, the driven physiologist Robert Edwards (Tom Felton) hunches over his microscope in pursuit of the holy grail of reproduction, the blastocyst. Together, two decades later, they make history as the creators of the world’s first test-tube baby.
