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Hannah Patterson's script begins in an apartment somewhere south of London where Robert (Mark Rice-Oxley) and Joanna (Trudi Jackson) live with their 9-week-old daughter. Joanna, bored, sleepless and recovering from a Cesarean birth, is not thrilled when Robert announces he's invited their friend Jake (Alan Cox) to dinner. Robert adds that Jake is bringing his new girlfriend, Stella (Daisy Hughes), a vegetarian. This is even less thrilling.The guests arrive, the Chilean red flows, and we learn of Joanna's unhappiness, Robert's imperiled professorship and Stella's extreme youth. She's still in high school. But what begins as a riff on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" morphs into a modern-day "Doll's House." * New York Times on "Playing With Grown Ups" * The lighthearted title of 'Playing with Grown Ups' disguises a darker core. Set over the course of a single evening, Hannah Patterson's . . . play . . . casts a nonjudgmental eye on a 40-year-old first-time mother who finds no pleasure in parenting. . . . There are echoes of 'A Doll's House' and a refreshing lack of preachiness * Time Out New York on "Playing With Grown Ups" * [An] enjoyable and thought-provoking four-hander ... There is something for everyone in this sharply observed comedy, which tackles everything from middle-aged regret and the myth of having it all to the question of whether fulfilment lies in a pile of nappies. It is potential dynamite and there are moments when this piece fizzes with comedy as well as emotion ... the play is smartly funny and intelligent, and dares to confront a taboo: that not every woman falls head over heels in love with her baby, and that sometimes work may be more alluring and fulfilling than motherhood. * Guardian on "Playing With Grown Ups" * Engaging new writing that asks the important question "can women have it all?" without providing a simplistic answer. * Daily Telegraph on "Playing With Grown Ups" * Patterson's sharp, funny script twists the knife into twenty-first-century life, bleak in its portrayal . . . of a generation of women struggling with the reality of feminism's legacy. * Stage on "Playing With Grown Ups" *