The Cord
Writer-director Bijan Sheibani’s new short play is very well-observed: it feels like a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the blurry first few months of being a parent. It nails the exhaustion, the rows, the anxiety, the joy – and the slow tectonic realisation that the parent you will be is not necessarily the one you want to be, and is coloured, shadowed, by the baby you were. It opens on a bare stage, which feels intimate and also empty, a blank to be filled. The three actors are barefoot; they and an accompanying cellist (Colin Alexander, excellent) each sit in one of the four corners of the stage. There’s nowhere to hide when a play is staged in-the-round, and we see every intimate detail from all sides, watching as Eilieen O’Higgins’s Anya struggles to breastfeed, and her partner Ash (Irfan Shamji) struggles with his feelings about Anya, their new baby and his own mother Jane (Lucy Black). It is all highly relatable - Ash’s furtive attempts to get it on with his tired wife get a big laugh. There is also some dark emotional tension gathering, heightened by the scrubbing of the cello’s bow. What’s going on with Ash? It’s definitely to do with his mother, who seems brisk and fine when they chat, but mysteriously writhes with agony offstage. Is her pain emotional? A bad back? Both? I wasn’t sure. The actors each bring very different energy to the piece. Irfan Shamji is gentle and thoughtful; Eileen O’Higgins as his wife often feels stronger and angrier than him, something which