Baby – Brixton House

Pearl Mackie takes on a whole cast of characters in Baby, with three chairs and a doll providing most of her company. Written by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and directed by Milli Bhatia, the Brixton House and Clean Break production brings a woman’s struggle to keep her child onto a stage that needs very little to make her world feel full.

Mackie plays Baby, whose name suggests a degree of care that her life has rarely delivered. She wants to keep Bliss, her own baby. Having experienced abuse and involvement with the criminal justice system, she turns to the audience in the hope that someone might help.

There is something of Kafka in the distance between the person seeking help and the system’s ability to understand them, although Bhatti approaches that frustration through a mother’s desire to keep her child.

For all that, there is plenty to laugh at. Bhatti’s dark comedy had the audience laughing out loud throughout much of the performance, giving us time to enjoy Baby’s company as well as worry about her future.

One performer turns out to be more than enough. Mackie’s accents are excellent, giving each person in Baby’s story an identity so distinct that you can almost picture them standing beside her. The changes in character are easy to follow, even as the stage becomes populated by people who are never physically there. There is real pleasure in watching an actor do this so well, and Mackie sustains it without losing the emotional thread of the story.

The lighting deserves a credit alongside the characters. Bethany Gupwell’s design gives Khadija Raza’s spare set an expressive presence of its own, making three chairs and a doll feel like all the production could possibly need. Bhatia keeps the staging simple enough for us to appreciate the detail in Mackie’s performance.

There are a couple of brief stumbles over words. The music in Elena Peña’s sound design also feels a little overpowering at times, competing with a performance that really does not so much accompaniment. These are small reservations, though, and neither takes much away from the enjoyment of the evening.

Baby’s love for Bliss gives the production something to hold on to through its most painful passages. It is felt throughout, without any assurance that loving her child will be enough to keep them together. Mackie makes us care about an outcome over which we have no control. It is an uncomfortable position, but it brings us a little closer to Baby’s own.

Baby is often very funny and deeply touching, carried by a performance that makes its small stage feel alive with possibility. Its criticism of bureaucracy is all the more powerful because Bhatti and Mackie make us so invested in the woman having to deal with it. Baby has told us her story, but whether the people deciding her future have truly listened is unbearably uncertain.

Baby runs at Brixton House until 31st October. https://brixtonhouse.co.uk/shows/baby/

Reviewer: Zandra Odetunde

Reviewed: 14th October 2026

North West End UK Rating: