This autumn, The Soon Life arrives at Southwark Playhouse Borough—and it’s not whispering politely. It’s pacing the floor, shouting through contractions, and laying bare the raw reality of childbirth with guts, heart, and darkly funny grit.
Written and performed by Phoebe McIntosh, this blisteringly honest two-hander unfolds in real time during lockdown, in the cramped but charged space of a London flat. At its centre is Bec, a dancer in her thirties who finds herself deep in labour and even deeper in emotional territory. She’s chosen to give birth at home, alone—but life, like labour, rarely goes according to plan. When her estranged ex, Alex, turns up, tensions rise faster than the contractions.
What follows is an unflinching, often caustically funny, exploration of identity, relationships, and the seismic experience of becoming a parent. With every breath, swear word, and surge of pain, Bec tries to hold it together while navigating both a physical trial and the emotional rubble of a broken relationship.
McIntosh’s writing is sharp, physical, and charged with humanity. Her portrayal of childbirth isn’t romanticised or sanitised—it’s real, visceral, and brimming with emotional stakes. The tens machine buzzes, the Moses basket sits expectantly in the corner, and the truth about the characters’ lives presses in with every contraction.
For McIntosh, this is personal. She began writing the play after the birth of her own daughter, driven by a desire to capture an experience that is rarely depicted with full honesty on stage.
“It was an opportunity,” she says, “to acknowledge the challenges childbirth involved for me personally while thinking more broadly about the myriad versions of birth there are. Everything it entails—heightened emotion, jeopardy, physicality, life, death, sound, sight, and feeling—is brought into focus.”
Coming five years after the pandemic that changed so many birth experiences and healthcare journeys, The Soon Life also lands at a time when maternity services in the UK are under intense scrutiny. While headlines expose scandal and systemic failure, this play offers something different: a close-up, deeply human view of what it means to give birth in modern Britain—not the textbook version, but the real thing, with all its mess, beauty, fury, and fear.
In a theatre landscape that often shies away from the realities of childbirth—or treats it as a comedic aside—The Soon Life puts it centre stage. And with it, a powerful story about what we cling to, and what we’re finally ready to let go of.
The Soon Life runs this autumn at Southwark Playhouse Borough. Don’t expect tidy endings. Do expect to be moved, challenged, and changed.
About the Author
