‘The Soon Life’ Opens at Southwark Playhouse Borough

This autumn, a bold, bitingly funny and deeply human play,The Soon Life, from writer and performer Phoebe McIntosh, will debut at Southwark Playhouse Borough. Set during lockdown in a London flat, the play unfolds in real-time to explore the messy intersections of motherhood, relationships and identity in an authentic and unapologetic presentation of childbirth.

At the heart ofThe Soon Life is a woman facing a life-changing event with honesty, humour, and a potty-mouthed resilience. The production follows Bec, a dancer in her thirties, in the midst of labour at home. Alone – by choice and by circumstance – she paces, breathes, and swears her way through contractions, determined to keep calm, composed and in control until her estranged ex, Alex, shows up. Amid the tens machine and the Moses basket, Bec attempts to maintain her composure while navigating the intensifying stages of labour and the emotional landmines of her broken relationship.

With its naturalistic setting, physical storytelling and caustic humour,The Soon Life delivers a gripping, fly-on-the-wall portrait of a couple on the cusp of change. This dynamic two-hander is a timely and raw exploration of what we carry and what we must let go of in order to move forward.

Writer and performer Phoebe McIntosh comments,Writing this play after the birth of my first daughter felt like the best way to reflect on what is, simply put, a landmark memory. It was an opportunity to acknowledge the challenges childbirth involved for me personally while thinking more broadly about the myriad versions of birth there are and how the experience touches everyone differently. This production feels like an opportunity to raise awareness of modern birth in a very different way. Everything it entails – heightened emotion, jeopardy, physicality, life, death, aural, visual and felt sensations for mother, baby and bystanders is brought into focus. It is my hope that the play moves, provokes and inspires those who see it, especially those who least expect it to.

Five years on from the pandemic and winning the Highly Commended Prize at Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Awards 2020,The Soon Life presents an emotional unravelling wrapped in real-time contractions, where time, pain and memory blur into something powerful and profoundly human. At a watershed moment for maternity services in the UK, with failings and scandals frequently reported in the press, McIntosh’s writing honours the realities of labour in all its unpredictability, while also confronting the emotional truths that so often remain buried. While many depictions of birth are relegated to off-stage or played for comic and dramatic effect,The Soon Life brings it unapologetically to the forefront.

Main Image: Courtesy of The Soon Life

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