Baby Brain – Salford Arts Centre

Tonight’s show may have a minimal set – just a chair and a table inside our setting of a mother and baby unit – but that is where the restraint ends. Co-written and directed by Tim Clague and Danny Stack, with input from BAFTA award-winning actor Kimberley Nixon, who stars in the show, this one-hour, one-woman play confronts postpartum mental illness with a fearlessness that is both admirable and, at times, very unsettling. Inspired in part by Nixon’s own experiences, the production tackles postpartum psychosis, postnatal OCD, and depression with unflinching honesty.

The show comes with a list of understandable trigger warnings for the heavy-duty topics of suicidal ideation, infant death, and severe postnatal mental illness, and rightly so.

We meet Cassie, a wannabe stand-up comedian, who initially masks her pain behind quick-fire jokes and self-deprecating charm before revealing the depths of her trauma following the birth of her second child. Nixon is excellent, a picture of exhaustion and mental fragility as we see her steadily lose her grip on reality yet staying immensely likeable throughout.

The script mixes black humour and heartbreak. The laughs come from delightfully petty observations about the absurd copywriting plastered across products aimed at new mothers and the indignities of childbirth. Yet the play makes laughter uncomfortable, requiring its audience to sit with the contradiction of humour and profound suffering.

Not every moment lands cleanly. Cassie’s fragmented thought processes occasionally become so disorientating that the narrative is difficult to follow, and some observations and declarations stray into cliché.

Ultimately though, Baby Brain gives a compassionate, human face to an often-misunderstood illness. Thanks to Nixon’s strong performance, it’s a definite conversation starter that will linger in its audiences’ minds.

For support with the issues raised in the play visit www.actiononpp.org

Baby Brain is on till Thursday 9^th July. For tickets and all other Manchester Fringe shows visit https://greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/events/

Reviewer: Lou Steggals

Reviewed: 6th July 2026

North West End UK Rating: 4