THE BABY

COMMENT

Reviewers and sub-editors love to riff on a play's title and The Baby got any amount of "ill-conceived conception", "premature death of a tragic baby" and "ugly miscarriage". It did have its fans - star actress Siobhan Redmond wrote me a letter to say how much she admired it - but they were in a minority. People seemed to have not the faintest idea what it was about.

For the record I wrote it while I was living in a part of Glasgow where more than a quarter of the population were unemployed (me among them). It was first produced in 1990 after a decade where politics had clearly been responsible for many private tragedies which could not be put right.

And I began it after the leader and the party who had been responsible for those griefs had been triumphantly re-elected for the third time.

I imagined the play, far from being obscure or remote, was too on the nose.

If anyone were to produce this play again I could only suggest that the difficulty the audience has is in developing empathy for the heroine. She's too angry (she has more rage than people like to see in women) and when she loses her child she does not express her grief as a "true mother" should.

I cannot change any of this because that's the core of the play. But if the director and the actress who takes the part know from the first day of rehearsals the challenge that faces them, I do believe it would be possible - without cheating - to draw the audience to the character. It's about finding moments of connection.