Be My Baby

Thanks to films such as Vera Drake, we no longer think of the 1950s and '60s simply as the era of "sex, drugs and Rock 'n’ Roll." We now know of the darker side of the "free love" ethos that regarded unmarried, pregnant girls with disdain. Therefore, though Be My Baby takes us into the heart of an intolerant society with all the good intentions of opening our eyes, it forgets that we’ve seen it all before.

We are in St Saviours, an institution for unmarried mothers-to-be, amongst four girls: Queenie, Dolores, Norma and new arrival Mary. The rest of the play is geared towards revealing the hidden depths of these young ladies as they face the ordeal of childbirth together.

The problem with this set up of female-bonding is that the play becomes a string of revelations and little else. Not only are these disclosures predictable, groping around territory that is all too horrifically familiar—rape, loss, rejection—they also lack intensity. The characters seem to volunteer their secrets with hardly any prompting, creating the mood of an indulgent group therapy session rather than an involving drama.

The stilted acting from the six-woman cast is engaging enough, but nowhere near exciting. The staging is also fairly unimaginative, with the girls spending the majority of their scenes folding and unfolding linen or doing dance routines to 60s classics which go on for an unnecessary length of time.

That said, this sad story manages to avoid the tempting clutches of sentimentality and carries a certain dramatic force that will at the very least hold your attention and might even move you.