Camden New Journal - Theatre: Be my baby

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The Review - THEATRE by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 7 June 2007

Tragic drama with a sting in the tail

BE MY BABY
Upstairs At The Gatehouse

BE My Baby will make you smile with touches of black comedy and it will remind you how much you really love Dusty Springfield’s back catalogue – but it’s a choker as well.
The story of four young girls who have wound up in a mother and baby home in the 1960s is full of inevitable pain.
The torture of having to give up their new-born children to childless families and the aching it’s-for-the-best mentality held by anybody over the age of 25 is spelt out in tears.
For every bit of smart scripting, for every black joke or washboard sing-a-long, there is a sting in the tail and the cast conjure up mountains of sorrow and pity.
Lisa Duffy excels in the main lead as Mary Adams, the intelligent one of the gang who thinks she is different because her medical student boyfriend says he loves her. She is quite believable as the character who picks apart the tragedy.
Yet even Duffy is outshone by Alicia Davies as brassy Queenie – the alpha female who dreams of singing like Dusty but whose playful croak doesn’t quite make the high notes.
When the two are on stage together, usually with a Springfield 45 rotating on a portable turntable, there are some genuinely captivating scenes.
There is no interval and it’s a 90 minute race. No chance then to dig too deep into why the home’s matron seems so bitter and only time to touch on how other inmates Norma (Jenny Harrold) and Dolores (Emma McMorrow) arrived here.
Nevertheless, it is an engaging piece which makes the grade and definitely worth checking out.
Until July 1
020 8340 3488

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