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The Review - THEATRE by JAMES COOPER
Published: 6 March 2008

Trapped inside the Baby Box

THE BABY BOX
Old Red Lion

THOUGH they have never received official sanction, “baby boxes” are more than just an urban myth. The idea of a deposit box where unwanted infants can be discarded anonymously most recently (and infamously) became a reality in one Japanese hospital last year.
In Too Write Productions’ story of one woman’s abusive childhood, the macabre concept forms part of an ever-present, hanging question: To what extent does the way we are brought up dictate who we become?
To be abused in any form is traumatic. When that figure is a matriarch who appeared to have saved you, the trauma is greater yet. The Baby Box pivots on an extreme act of defiance, resulting in incarceration and the troubled road back into civilisation. On her eventual release from prison, Yvonne (Sarah Finnegan) arrives at her sister Glenda’s (Joanna Watt) house expecting a warm welcome, understanding and support. But she is greeted with an icy shoulder. Glenda was not abused and can’t quite accept what had gone on before.
Over the course of the play well-used flashbacks allow Joanna Watt to play a variety of characters and the motherly favouritism towards Glenda becomes apparent.
Yvonne, in her foster mother’s eyes, remains the runt. On Yvonne’s release from prison she hitches a lift with a van driver and pays for it in kind. Nine months later a child is born and is given up for adoption. Yvonne herself was the “mistake” of a local MP around the time of the Profumo scandal. Can life break its cycle?
The naturalistic, gritty writing – reminiscent of Mike Leigh – is dampened slightly by changeable acting, and the powerful exploration of nurture over nature is left unfinished by the finale, when the emotional act around which the characters’ lives revolve is unveiled.
Until March 22
020 7837 7816

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