REVIEW: LIFE BEFORE YOU @ THEATRE ROYAL PLYMOUTH

🎭 Life Before You

📍  The Drum, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Royal Parade, Plymouth, Devon, PL1 2TR

🗓 Thursday 26th February 2026

⭐️ 4 Stars

INTENSE, BOLD, AND RELATABLE

A mother stands before us, the love for her child glowing in her face. She relives the detailed moments of the child’s birth. A passionate love story, one of pride and total maternal devotion. 

A teenage daughter stands before us, newly independent, owning her own birth, fiercely grasping her life. 

So begins Eva Hudson’s play LIFE BEFORE YOU, drawing the lines of love, misunderstanding and unspoken past from the onset. The threads of narrative tangling harder and more knotted as the play progresses. Experiences and feelings hidden for all the right reasons – and all the wrong ones. 

The mother is Grάinne. She is from the Ardoyne, Belfast and grew up during the Troubles. Finding herself pregnant by a smooth-talking English soldier called Tom. She flees to Surrey, sold to her as, “much like Marbella, only better” to escape censure and shaming from her Mam. Leaving everything she knows behind she dedicates her life to giving her daughter a better start. With her now husband, Tom, being largely absent, mother and daughter grow very close. 

The daughter is Eimear, intelligent, artistic and hungry for life. Despite this she has difficulty making friends and is hurting with self doubt.  

When Eimear gains a place at Oxford University the relationship between mother and daughter strains and stretches causing pain and conflict which both hide from the other. 

This tight, intense play, sensitively directed by Roisin McCay-Hines, forces the issues of being a woman and intergenerational discord unashamedly to the fore. Many will be familiar to parents, who hasn’t had their teenager scream, “You don’t know me!” in frustration? Being a young adult and finding their own place can be desperately hard and my heart bled for Eimear. 

Most women whose children have grown and left will identify with the double whammy of the empty nest and the crippling onset of perimenopause/ menopausal symptoms which are still regarded as “women’s problems” If more widely discussed they would be less terrifying and isolating! 

This show avoids being worthy and polemic however, making the points openly but also underlying them with warm affection and intimate moments of closeknit family, the little private routines that mean so much. It is relatable, heartbreaking and feisty, just like its characters. I found myself wanting to give both characters a big hug at some points and wanting to yell, “just talk to each other” at others. I will confess to nodding and muttering, “Yep” a couple of times too. 

The acting in this show is superb, emotive and gritty. Georgia Alexandra’s ability to switch roles between Eimear, irritating neighbour and useless doctor is a tour de force and a brilliant foil for the volatile, impassioned Grάinne, Hayley-Marie Axe.  The imagined foreign mistresses of the absent Tom, described in detail by Grάinne and performed with gusto by Georgia are comedic cliches that make the audience laugh in sympathy. 

I suspect the audience will take away difference thoughts of the play dependant on age and life experience but have no doubt that it will stay in their minds to ponder on the way home especially the wonderful final scenes. 

There's two more chances to catch LIFE BEFORE YOU in Plymouth. Click here for the last remaining tickets.

Rosie Sharman-Ward

All views are my own and I pride myself on being honest, fair and free from influence. Theatre is subjective and it is important to remember that all views expressed are just those of one person.

My ticket for this performance of Life Before You was gifted by Theatre Royal Plymouth who invited me to watch the show on behalf of Pink Prince Theatre in exchange for my honest review. The fact that my ticket was gifted played no part in the content of my review or the star rating given.

CAST LIST:

Hayley-Marie Axe as Gráinne; Georgia Alexandra as Eimear / Multirole

RUNNING TIME (approx):

1 hour 30 minutes, with no interval

CONTENT WARNINGS: 

Contains flashing lights and themes of women’s healthcare; Class; Aging; Family conflict; Sexual violence.

Products containing gluten, barley, cereal, oats, celeriac, wheat and rye are consumed on stage. 

AGE GUIDELINE:

12 +

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