Her waters aren’t the only thing breaking.
A heavily pregnant, thirty-something woman is in labour. Too scared to go to the hospital in lockdown London, she’s decided to have the ‘perfect’ home birth with nothing but a birthing ball and a boxset to get her through it.
Plans are derailed when her ex turns up and refuses to leave.
As her labour progresses and with the midwife unreachable, the pair are forced to confront the remnants of their relationship and their breakup before everything changes forever with the arrival of their child.
The Soon Life delivers a funny, gripping, fly-on-the-wall portrait of a woman on the cusp of change.
We caught up with writer and performer Phoebe McIntosh to learn more.
What can you tell me about the show?
The show is very funny in parts so expect laughter. But expect tears too, because there are more than rom-com vibes on offer. Bec’s sharp, sardonic tongue and the sarcasm she uses to channel her anger at Alex’s abandonment of her is engaging and unexpected, particularly the way she f’s and blinds and just doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, especially given some of the conventional notions we have of pregnant women.
There is no delaying the arrival of this child, everything about their lives, down to the time they have to talk to each other alone, will be different from the moment the baby is there in front of them. Anything they have to say to each other in ‘ordinary time’ must be said tonight. It’s about the nitty gritty of relationships. Was their breakup a slow burn or a clean break? Can something be salvaged? What kind of parents will they be? How do they rally when life just be lifing (for lack of a better phrase). What do we learn from them? And what do we learn about ourselves in light of that. There’s only one way to find out.
The show is very funny in parts so expect laughter. But expect tears too, because there are more than rom-com vibes on offer. Bec’s sharp, sardonic tongue and the sarcasm she uses to channel her anger at Alex’s abandonment of her is engaging and unexpected, particularly the way she f’s and blinds and just doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, especially given some of the conventional notions we have of pregnant women.
There is no delaying the arrival of this child, everything about their lives, down to the time they have to talk to each other alone, will be different from the moment the baby is there in front of them. Anything they have to say to each other in ‘ordinary time’ must be said tonight. It’s about the nitty gritty of relationships. Was their breakup a slow burn or a clean break? Can something be salvaged? What kind of parents will they be? How do they rally when life just be lifing (for lack of a better phrase). What do we learn from them? And what do we learn about ourselves in light of that. There’s only one way to find out.
A sharp, well-observed contemporary take on a couple about to become parents. It’s got a real time, fly on the wall feel to it. The labour and birth aspect make it far from your average rom-com.
What drew you to this piece?
I’d just had my first baby when I got a place on Soho Writers’ Lab. After a healthy, largely uneventful pregnancy, I’d gone into the birth feeling positive and excited, becoming a new little family. So, it hadn’t really entered my mind that it might turn out to be one of the most challenging experiences I’d ever go through. There were moments my husband thought that neither I nor our baby would make it. I knew I wanted to write a play about birth. The eureka moment came when I attended a pregnancy and post-natal yoga class, and a woman there broke down in tears telling the class that her partner had just left her. She was 8 weeks away from giving birth to her first child. I remember my mouth falling open and not being able to stop thinking about what that would be like, being in her shoes. Whatever play I’d been writing before, I was set on a new trajectory after that. The words flew out of me.
PM: This is my first show since maternity leave, so I decided to do a short course at RADA to dust off a few cobwebs. Building Bec has happened incrementally and will probably continue to right up the end of rehearsals. It started when I wrote her first line on a blank page, then more of her took shape when I did a rehearsed reading with Soho Theatre and then a script in hand R&D with Talawa. I’m taking evening classes at The Place to inform the way she might move, this will be taken to the next level by Sarah’s direction and Tian Brown-Sampson's movement coordination in rehearsals. And of course, I’ll be drawing on my own lived experience of labour and birth - two very different versions. It all goes into the pot. The patch work quilt of character work that gradually gets knitted together. Yep, I’d say Bec is a work in progress, in all the right ways.
How do you usually physically and mentally prepare for a run?
I’ve got a grainy recording of a dance warm up routine we used to do at Drama school. It’s 20 mins long, I try to do it every morning on performance days. It seems to get me in the zone. I can just about see myself on it at the edge of the screen. I try not to let the me of 20 years ago, finding my feet at drama school, missing steps, not being able to reach my toes, put me off. In fact, I try to think the opposite- there I was wanting to be an actor and all these years later it’s still part of my life, a huge part. I’m not sure how much you can mentally prepare for a run. I think the best thing I can do is be in the moment, so mindfulness is key. That way I’m not worrying about things that may or may not happen. I’m responding to the circumstances I find myself in. Well, that’s the aim at least.
I’ve got a grainy recording of a dance warm up routine we used to do at Drama school. It’s 20 mins long, I try to do it every morning on performance days. It seems to get me in the zone. I can just about see myself on it at the edge of the screen. I try not to let the me of 20 years ago, finding my feet at drama school, missing steps, not being able to reach my toes, put me off. In fact, I try to think the opposite- there I was wanting to be an actor and all these years later it’s still part of my life, a huge part. I’m not sure how much you can mentally prepare for a run. I think the best thing I can do is be in the moment, so mindfulness is key. That way I’m not worrying about things that may or may not happen. I’m responding to the circumstances I find myself in. Well, that’s the aim at least.
In relation to birth, the only memory that sticks out for me of ever seeing birth depicted on stage was Small Island at the National a few years ago. I remember it really clearly as until then, I'd only seen it on screen and hadn't, at the time, given birth myself yet. I remember thinking of it as an interesting challenge for a production, the positioning of Queenie, the mother, the way Hortense acted as her midwife, how convincingly they approached it. It wasn't cut or played for laughs. It's a pivotal moment in the story and they honoured it. It obviously wasn't in real time and there were limitations but that could be where The Soon Life comes in. Taking steps forward in portraying a more realistic birth experience on stage, and more than that, labour - often a long, drawn out process, with many hours to fill with waiting before the baby appears. I was curious about what was happening in the moments One Born Every Minute edits out. A doula recently said thank you for trying to make an antidote to the Hollywood treatment given to birth!' There are obviously restrictions, this isn't a documentary or a verbatim reenactment, it is drama, but we've tried to stay true to the full experience of birth and give audiences an insight to what it's like to have a baby at home.
I’m finding Barbra Streisand’s autobiography very inspiring at the moment! Luckily, it’s the 42 hour long audio version so she’ll be inspiring me for a chapter a day for a while to come. Apart from that, I always make a point of reading the poems overhead on the Tube if there happens to be one on my carriage, those and the quotes at the entrance to the station on the whiteboards. Walking to places and slow travel in general allows for plenty of opportunities for inspiration to find me as well. I get into a flow with writing and new ideas whenever I’m on a train staring out the window as the world outside rushes by.
What would you hope someone takes away from seeing the show?
Babies are born, but parents are born that day too. It is all so delicate- life, relationships. A new appreciation of that maybe, or a chance to reflect on their experience of those things in light of this story.
Babies are born, but parents are born that day too. It is all so delicate- life, relationships. A new appreciation of that maybe, or a chance to reflect on their experience of those things in light of this story.
At the Southwark Playhouse Borough from the 1st to the 18th of October. https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-soon-life/
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