Next Door's Baby

Synopsis

Set in 1950s Dublin - earthy musical tale of feuding mothers, jealousy and family secrets. As a Bonny Baby competition deepens the rift between the neighbouring Hennessys and O'Briens, we learn that nothing in either tiny terraced house is quite as it seems. The neighbouring families are both convinced their little bundle of joy will triumph. Orla, eldest daughter of the noisy, numerous O'Briens, glances with envy across the garden wall at Miriam Hennessy's sedate and genteel home life. Whilst the matriarchs feud, the two girls discover they have something in common: they both hide a shameful secret. On the eve of the final they collude on a daring plan that will change their lives and their relationships with their families for ever.

Our Review:

11 February 2008

This must be a first in musical theatre: an opening, very fast patter number in which a woman in a housecoat pummels at a lump of dough. It’s not exactly Mrs Lovett stacking up her pies in Sweeney Todd, and it’s not remotely Mrs Johnson in Blood Brothers, but there is something of the desperate dowdy housewife in Louise Gold’s powerful performance that keeps you wondering, for a while at least, what might be the problem here.

Next Door's Baby proves still-born, alas, a rather too effortful and uninspired show about neighbours, the friendship of single mothers and a less than exciting bonny baby contest (the babies are played by swaddled dolls) that peters out before it ever really peters in.

The book by Bernie Gaughan – derived from her own radio play – sets up a domestic tension between the O’Brien and Hennessy households in a Dublin suburb in the 1950s. Matthew Strachan has provided music and lyrics that are certainly competent, u...

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