A Child of Science

Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, and Jean Purdy changed the world as we know it – and most people don’t even know their names.

Award winning Gareth Farr’s brilliant new play tells their pioneering story, and those of the army of women from all over the UK whose immense bravery helped them achieve the impossible – to create human life in vitro.

 A Child of Science charts the incredible events that led to one of the most remarkable medical breakthroughs of our time: the birth of a baby girl and the creation of IVF, a procedure which has supported the birth of over 12 million babies worldwide over the last forty years.

Directed by the highly acclaimed West End director Matthew Dunster (Hangmen, 2:22 A Ghost Story, Shirley Valentine) and featuring the award-winning Tom Felton (Harry Potter), A Child of Science is about determination, dreams, hope, and courage. It’s a celebration of life.

Joining the previously revealed Tom Felton (2:22 A Ghost Story) will be Jamie Glover (Waterloo Road, What’s In A Name?) as Patrick Steptoe,  Meg Bellamy (known for her appearance as Kate Middleton in the final season of The Crown, now making her professional stage debut) as embryologst Jean Purdy, Adelle Leonce (Fool Me Once, Emilia) as Margaret, one of the hundreds of anonymous women who assisted in the medical trials and Sonoya Mizuno (Devs, House of the Dragon) in roles including philanthropist Lillian Lincoln Howell and Sheena Steptoe.

The cast is completed by Saikat Ahamed (Life of Pi), Gruffudd Glyn (Joseph K and the Cost of Living), Bobby Hirston (The Play That Goes Wrong), Amy Loughton (Animal), Bebe Sanders (Twelfth Night) and Everal A Walsh (Rockets and Blue Lights ).

★★★★

“Gritty, well researched... a real tour de force”
WhatsOnStage on Britannia Waves the Rules

A Child of Science is a fictionalised account of the true story of the events that led to the first ‘test-tube’ birth of a baby and the invention of IVF. The play is based on research and interviews over many years with embryologists and fertility doctors, some of whom worked closely with Bob Edwards, as well as those whose lives were affected by and enabled by those events. It features characters inspired by real-life individuals, and some entirely imagined by the writer.

Gareth Farr is a Cornish based writer, Casting Director Matilda James and Associate Director Alix Harris and actor Adelle Leonce are from Cornwall and this play forms part of the #Made-in-Cornwall strand of Impossibles work.