DID mother know best? Well, local audiences will have the chance to judge when the London Classic Theatre present their UK tour of Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should when it appears locally later this month.

Artistic Director of LCT, Michael Cabot, directs Felicity Houlbrooke (Rosie Metcalfe), Carole Dance (Doris Partington), Kathryn Ritchie (Jackie Metcalfe) and Connie Walker (Margaret Bradley) as the production tours to 14 venues, including Malvern’s Festival Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday, November 13 to 17.

Set in Manchester, Oldham and London, My Mother Said I Never Should is a poignant, bittersweet story about love, jealousy and the price of freedom.

The play details the lives of four women through the immense social changes of the twentieth century. Using a kaleidoscopic time structure, Charlotte Keatley’s story focuses on four generations of one family as they confront the most significant moments of their lives.

In 1940, Doris, a former teacher, encourages her nine-year-old daughter, Margaret, to mind her manners and practice the piano. Then in 1969, Margaret’s relationship with her own daughter is strained, as art student Jackie experiments with her new found sexual freedom. When Jackie becomes pregnant at 18 and has baby Rosie, a decision is made that will affect all their lives irrevocably.

Charlotte Keatley is a Manchester Evening News award-winning playwright and My Mother Said I Never Should is the most widely performed play ever written by a woman, having now been translated or produced in 31 countries from Japan to Peru.

Other credits include The Iron Serpent, An Armenian Childhood, Waiting for Martin, Fears and Miseries in the Third Term, The Ringing Singing Tree, The Sleep of Reason, Our Father and I am Janet.