THE Man (Alistair Petrie) and the Woman (Katy Stephens) have everything.

He is an architect, handy for designing their chic, minimalist house, one of those symbolic glass constructions – glass shatters easily – with white interiors and clean lines, and furniture built for statement, not comfort. She is an interior designer, as glamorous as her work.

All that is missing from this wealthy couple’s portfolio for the perfect life is a baby. The Man fires only blanks, and so adoption is their last hope.

Rose (Lorraine Stanley) has no home. She is funding a drug habit through prostitution, and the new-born baby in her shivering arms is to be given over to the couple. She can give her child nothing but… a mother’s natural bond.

This troubles the Woman, so much so that she comes to feel she is a criminal, who has stolen the baby. And so unfolds the minefield of adoption in writer-director Polly Teale’s troubling new play for Shared Experience.

Rose’s journey is the more familiar in modern-day kitchen-sink dramas, one where circumstance rather than fate conspires against her.

The more complex character is the Woman, whose mental state is reflected in two relationships: one broken, with her suffocating Mother (Marion Bailey), who overburdened her unhappy childhood with her desire for perfection; the other, represented by the Child (Sophie Stone, in a white Victorian nightgown).

This is the inner Woman, unseen by the other characters, a Child who squeezes into a worn old doll’s house and represents an idealised child, a ghost of childhood gone, and a vision of the baby’s future.

Thomas Gray’s video projections add to the sense of inner turmoil; Clare Lawrence Moody’s eastern European maid adds topicality and a dab of blunt humour.

The Man’s emotional journey, by comparison, plays second fiddle until one key moment: his sudden expression of worthlessness brought on by impotence. For him, having everything is not enough; for his wife, having everything is too much and means nothing when love has no price tag.


Mine, Shared Experience, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight at 7.45pm, tomorrow at 2.30pm, 7.45pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700.