Next Door’s Baby

Published Monday 11 February 2008 at 10:20 by John Thaxter

Bernie Gaughan’s play started life as a radio drama about a thrifty Irish matriarch, recently widowed and keeping up appearances in the difficult days of the fifties.

But a newspaper competition to find Dublin’s bonniest baby sparks a bitter rivalry with her posh next door neighbour as the two women each become convinced their own little bundle of joy will win.

Gaughan in collaboration with her husband, composer and lyricist Matthew Strachan, has now turned this inter-family feud into a small-scale stage musical with more than a dozen songs.

Louise Gold plays the materfamilias as a spirited, working-class woman keeping a family scandal within her four walls - Holding It All Together as she sings in her gritty opening solo.

The lyrics mostly shape the melody, and as a result the musical spotlight turns away from her central figure to focus on three other characters, dreamers who just happen to have the best songs - notably Emily Sills as the troubled blonde soprano from next door, who launches into a sweetly tuneful revelation of her innermost Secrets.

Launching the second act, tenor Stephen Carlile playing the oldest son also does a terrific turn as a would-be Canadian mountie with his waltz time Red and Blue.

But the most dramatically effective song comes from actress singer Riona O’Connor as an unmarried mother, whose poignant Hello Me, provides the show’s crucial turning point. And I must add a word of praise for Claire Louise Connolly, youngest member of the cast, who projects her lines with expressive verve and clarity.