A Miracle

A Miracle
Written by	Molly Davies
Date premiered	2009 Royal Court Theatre, London
Original language	English

A Miracle by Molly Davies was her first professionally staged play and was staged first at the upstairs Jerwood Theatre at Royal Court Theatre in London in 2009 as part of the theatre's Young Writers Festival. It starred Russell Tovey, Kate O'Flynn, Sorcha Cusack and Gerard Horan.

The plot follows the struggle of a teenage single mother, Amy Aston, to bond with her unwanted baby daughter Cara in rural Norfolk. Amy works at a chicken factory whilst her grandmother, Val, looks after the child. The young mother begins a tumultuous relationship with Gary Trudgill, a violent and traumatised soldier on sick leave from the Army. Gary's outbursts, in part a response to the treatment he receives from his own father, Rob, threaten to harm the child. The play ends on a potentially helpful note, with baby Cara's survival being the miracle of the play's title.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer began by saying, "I'm in a tricky position here. There is nothing I can say about Molly Davies's remarkable play A Miracle that is going to make you want to see it. Almost throughout its 75 minute running time (it feels much longer) I was desperate to get out of the theatre myself", before adding, "But this is emphatically a drama that deserves and needs to be seen, not least by those politicians who endlessly bang on about our broken society". Spencer recalled that, "Babies don't tend to survive for long in Royal Court plays (Remember Edward Bond's Saved?) and poor Cara spends much of the time crying, horribly realistically, in her buggy, shredding the nerves of every parent in the audience", but found, "It's worth enduring, though, not only for the power and truth of both writing and performances, but also for the tentative glimmer of hope at the end". Assessing the cast's performances, he judged that "Kate O'Flynn brings an astonishingly raw vulnerability to the stage as Amy […] Sorcha Cusack plays the grandmother with a robust humanity that warms this punishing play; Russell Tovey has a terrifying touch of the psycho about him as the squaddie, while Gerard Horton as his father shows how man hands on misery to man". Spencer concluded his review by writing, "With a bleakly atmospheric rural design by Patrick Burnier that is so real you can actually smell it and a tense, gutsy production by Lyndsey Turner, this proves a shattering full-length debut by 26-year-old Molly Davies".

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