Review by Simon Jenner, October 7 2025
★★★★(★)
Ex-partner Alex can’t get an answer because his nine-months-pregnant ex-fiance´ Bec is wrapped in headphones and affirmation techniques and certainly doesn’t want her ex around. Bec wants a home birth. Because it’s 2020 and we’re already in lockdown. Hospitals are dangerous and a thirty-something biracial woman is more likely to die, Bec adds. Sarah Meadows directs Phoebe McIntosh’s The Soon Life at Southwark Borough’s Little – with McIntosh as Bec – till October 18.
This is a superb small-scale drama, with the soon life itself here given a truth and visceral power I’ve not seen on stage. Joe Boylan’s Alex is the perfect foil. He slouches many miles in Alex’s shoes and indeed has returned on the excuse of picking up a manky pair of boots.
Joe Boylan and Phoebe McIntosh . Photo Credit: Suzi Corker
A play based on the dramatist’s – and several of the creative team’s – experiences, it doesn’t just address the difficulties of giving birth during the pandemic. The scandal of maternity cover during the time is percolated through with audible phone-calls to unsympathetic or cavalier midwives, who don’t pick up, or who terminate calls, and when they finally answer it’s unhelpful. Not that Bec helps herself by switching to a more hands-off approach. McIntosh’s dialogue (some cut in this performance) is whip-smart and funny. In particular McIntosh’s maddening (to Alex) mix of calm speech delivering blistering retorts with a seraphic smarm. Of course it’s a front. Bec’s terrified. But also furious. Why did Alex leave when she was seven months pregnant?
Alex is just terrified. A chef whose second restaurant has just had to close, he’s also at a loose end. He’d wanted a hospital for Bec but not been given that option by her: “Only one person delivers a baby and that’s the mother. I love how people are always trying to take credit for that.” Because Bec hasn’t told anyone except her mum and she’s sticking with that. Bec’s own determination for home-birth is far-sighted, with hospitals an even greater danger Bec says “to Black and mixed-race women” than others during the pandemic. McIntosh also invests Bec with the kind of stubbornness to see her choice through even when it’s potentially an even worse option.
Alex on the other hand has swallowed the co-parenting manual whole, asserts he too has practised mindfulness for years, and starts mansplaining hesitantly: Bec’s retort “My whole body is opening up and a new person is going to climb out” is not only definitive, it’s part of the chasm of experience between Bec and Alex so intensely detailed. There’s history here too, some harrowing reveals that terrace and inform the whole painful terrain of the couple’s relationship with parenting. Other details of the pandemic (there in the text) are pared back in this performance.
There’s some visceral moments I won’t spoil. Sarah Beaton’s set and costumes are a stripe of pre-birth in a living room. A few shelves, a table, cushions and stage right a large birthing pool. Alex Musgrave’s lighting is just at a hallucinatory edge: a window pulses strips of sunlight and blinding pain, in scene changes and dimmings.
Beth Duke’s sound composition is punctuated with all the build and screams we don’t need in say 2:22. It’s particularly strong being synched to Bec’s contractions. It ends in a big hug of a melody with a hint of what’s to come; which is fine storytelling, if a touch sentimental. No harm in that. Various birth tech devices designated in the text are pruned. It’s like clearing verismo props and even some dialogue to get at the truth in 100 minutes.
There’s moments of intimacy based around childbirth, and a little nudity, again toned down. In such a play Tian Brown-Sampson’s movement and intimacy direction takes up quite a few of the most intense moments of the play.
There’s a small harrowing moment during a surprise flashback when Bec reveals that during acting training she had to role-play an overdue mother for a medical exam. Her relation of that explains some things and immediately alarms us too
Joe Boylan and Phoebe McIntosh. Photo Credit: Suzi Corker
McIntosh doesn’t flinch from using Bec’s uber-smart dialogue against her, and ensuring we’re not irritated by guying it with Bec’s own innate sense of superiority. It’s a clever device to allow clever, extremely-informed commentaries on everything from the maternity service to male cowardice to ever-hovering parents and the government. It also allows those moments of rapt contemplation of knowing a child’s name, perhaps, when you see their face. Alex isn’t short-changed here: he affirms his sensitivity by ceding this to Bec as much better at it than himself; and shows a capacity to grow, become vulnerable and unfold. The testiness and adversarial dialogue patterns – loaded hugely against Alex at the start – slowly soften and even meld as they grow back to some of their former intimacy. It’s staged with food. There’s hilarious moment when Bec admits she’s no longer vegan and wants a beefburger. There’s evena sushi for the celebration. Bec’s final choice is delicious.
McIntosh is sovereign in both her dialogue and mix of sassy put-downs, fear, hurt and extraordinary physical acting, topped by huge cries and roars of pain. A consummate actor/writer over the last 12 years, she’s clearly the definitive actor of her own play; but this work should be seen often. Boylan too is affecting in his mix of initial helplessness, a dose of mansplaining and genuine bewilderment. And in peeling the wrong he does Bec.
Boylan’s also mesmerising in the moment Alex asks if he can have a private word with the bump when Bec dons earphones. What happens next shrugs off the mild comedy and in a few beats we’re in a wondrous theatrical moment from both actors. The way none of this is overplayed, how a climax can be hushed, is spellbinding.
This is a small, brilliant gem of a play. One might almost call it as miraculous as giving life itself.
Costume Assistant Shannon Blackwood, Videography Rich Rus Film, Photography Suzi Corker, communication Coordinator Valenzia Spearpoint, Press & Publicity Chloe Nelkin PR
Phoebe McIntosh and Joe Boylan. Photo Credit: Suzi Corker
