Baby review – Pearl Mackie is meticulous as an abuse survivor
Brixton House, London Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s compassionate solo play follows a young mother’s struggle to get life back on track after time behind bars Plenty of abuse survivors don’t go on to commit terrible crimes, argues the titular Baby as she attempts to make sense of the cause-and-effect cycle that landed her in prison and saw her precious baby daughter forcibly removed. It’s a line that echoes the more…
Key points
- Pearl Mackie plays Baby in Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's solo play at Brixton House, London.
- The play follows a young mother's life from childhood to prison and her struggle to recover.
- It is produced by Clean Break, a theatre company for women in the criminal justice system.
Pearl Mackie stars as the title character in Baby, a solo play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti presented at Brixton House in London. The production is by Clean Break, a theatre company created specifically for women in the sightlines of the criminal justice system.
The play traces the life of a young mother who, after unknowingly getting involved with an older criminal, ends up behind bars and has her baby daughter forcibly removed. It follows her struggle to get her life back on track.
What the play argues
Baby argues that many abuse survivors do not go on to commit terrible crimes, as she tries to make sense of the cycle that led to her imprisonment. The review notes that her line echoes commentary around the case of US death row inmate Christa Pike, whose failed execution last month drew global headlines.
The play offers a cradle-to-grave look at its character's life while spotlighting what it calls a broken pipeline. Once someone has fallen into crime and drug dependency, it argues, climbing back out is impossible, and survival means becoming a number with a case file and little agency.
You believe me, right?
— Baby, played by Pearl Mackie
Mackie's performance
Mackie carries the character from a precocious child who is top of her class, despite caring for her mother behind the scenes, to a young woman behind bars. The review calls her performance meticulous.
Under Milli Bhatia's direction, Baby wears a beaming smile almost permanently, and the review says this can make trauma seem to bounce off her too lightly. It adds that the details of her roughest ordeals are skipped over, giving the sense of a diluted, censored version of a darker story.
