Sunday, October 25

Tag: Pearl Mackie

Baby – Brixton House
London

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 ...
Ballet Shoes – National Theatre
London

Ballet Shoes – National Theatre

Based on the well-loved novel by Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes is the heartwarming story of three orphans who, in twists of fate, find themselves as sisters with the unlikely but chosen surname of “Fossil”. Pauline, Petrova and Posy make a vow to put their name in the history books and make a living to support their unconventional but loving family. Before we meet the Fossils, we are told of Sylvia (Pearl Mackie), who finds herself orphaned and taken to live with her only living relative, Great Uncle Matthew (Philip Labey), or more affectionately known as “GUM”. GUM is a collector of fossils and a devoted geologist, who adventures around the world looking for the next gem. The three treasures he happens to bring home are the three orphan sisters, much to the dismay of Sylvia’s Nana (Je...