BABY IN THE MIRROR

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★½

“a gentle, intimate hour with moments of truth and tenderness”

Joey and Lena have just moved into a new home. Cardboard boxes are still stacked around them, their lives mid-transition. They are also about to have a baby, with the help of their friend Ollie, who has stepped in as a sperm donor. It is an intriguing premise, full of questions about queer family, readiness, and desire.

SecondAdolescence’s debut play, Baby in the Mirror, begins with warmth and ease. Joey and Lena’s relationship is tenderly drawn, their banter light and affectionate. There is a genuine intimacy between them, and the dialogue has a softness and spark that makes it feel as if we have been invited into their living room to quietly watch. Ollie brings a flash of flamboyance and chaos, a counterpoint to the couple’s cosy dynamic. The rapport between the three is easy and believable, creating a tenderness in the intimacy that is one of the play’s most appealing qualities.

Gradually, it becomes clear that one of them is ready for the baby, and one of them is not, though neither can quite bring themselves to say it. Lena struggles with anxiety, culminating in a panic attack towards the end, while Joey quietly sits on their own fears.

The performances are the production’s strongest asset. Stella Marie Sophie as Lena carries a physical tension that says as much as the dialogue, curling into themselves in moments of distress. Joey is played with a softness and vulnerability by Zoë West, the conflict of wanting to be honest but not wanting to hurt their partner written across their face. Ollie, played by Derek Mitchell, has an infectious energy that stops the domesticity from becoming too still, though his presence sometimes threatens to tip the balance of the trio away from the central couple’s emotional journey. It is in these small physical beats and tonal shifts that the piece finds its emotional depth.

Stylistically, Baby in the Mirror feels like it is aiming for extreme naturalism. There are moments where the stillness, silences, and offhand rhythms of conversation land beautifully. Leaning further into that mode could strengthen the work. At times, the writing and direction seems hesitant to fully commit to it, pulling back into more conventional theatrical beats just when the awkward pauses or meandering chats are at their most revealing.

While the premise promises a probing look at what it means for queer couples to create a family, the story really centres the relationship itself. This is lovely to watch, but it leaves many of the broader ideas unexplored. The questions posed by the play’s premise remain mostly at the edges.

The ending is abrupt. It does not carry the charge of a deliberate cliffhanger, more the feeling that the conversation has simply stopped. This adds to the sense that the piece is an early draft of something with much more to say. The craft of the dialogue, the chemistry between the performers, and the gentle humour all suggest strong foundations. With further development, the play could dig deeper into its characters’ inner worlds, while bringing the social and political contexts into sharper focus.

As it stands, Baby in the Mirror is a gentle, intimate hour with moments of truth and tenderness, but it feels like it is only just beginning to scratch the surface of the family story it wants to tell.

BABY IN THE MIRROR

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Reviewed on 9th August 2025 at Red Lecture Theatre at Summerhall

by Joseph Dunitz

Photography by Ejay Freeman

BABY IN THE MIRROR

★★★★

“It’s a thrill to watch, genuinely hilarious at times”

A key memory of In Bed With My Brother’s last Fringe show, Tricky Second Album in 2019, was the rumour that they had failed their risk assessment and had to cancel the first three performances. Naturally, this only made it one of the hottest tickets of the festival, and it lived up to the hype. Loud, chaotic, and dangerous, their work gleefully dismantles both dramaturgical and health-and-safety rule books.

After a few years away, they return with what they tell us is going to be a more traditional show, a biographical take on “the best worst band of all time” The Shaggs, and their 1969 album Philosophy of the World (we just can’t mention this to Tom Cruise who owns the rights). We’re told to expect a classic three-act structure, with the trio playing the Wiggin sisters and hired actor Nigel Barrett as their father and stage manager. But tradition doesn’t last long, and predictably, chaos sets in.

The first act covers the story: Dorothy, Betty, and Helen Wiggin (Nora Alexander, Dora Lynn and Kat Cory AKA “In Bed With My Brother”) are pushed into forming a band after their father is told by a fortune teller they will become famous. They work relentlessly, eventually producing an album mocked on release. We as the audience boo and jeer on cue, some of us cast as various townsfolk.

But then Austin dies. What follows is an attempt to escape. Barrett as Austin returns again and again as a ghost, trying to get control of things, but each time he’s killed in varying levels of bloody and violent ways; on one occasion beaten to death, on another impaled by a microphone stand, blood dripping from his mouth.

Part of the show’s brilliance is its ability to make the violence seem so real. And part of that is because much of it is: Drums really are thrown forcefully onto the stage; a can of cola really does explode in the audience. And it’s the chaos and seeming spontaneity of these moments that makes some of the deaths seem themselves genuinely violent. It’s frankly a relief to see the brilliant Ruth Cooper-Brown credited as fight director to know that they were in fact all safe. At one point a cigarette is nearly lit on stage (which is an absolute no-no in Scotland thanks to the 2005 Health and Social Care Act). It’s genuinely hard to tell how far they’ll go though, with the finale of their last show seeing them threaten to burn the night’s ticket income.

Beneath the mayhem lies a pointed question about making art under imposed structures, whether patriarchal or otherwise, and how those in power dictate the work we’re “allowed” to make. It also feels like they’ve been working through some stuff as a company; trying to figure out what their next move is and what sort of work they want to make next.

It’s a thrill to watch, genuinely hilarious at times, though it feels, ironically, a little too safe. Tricky Second Album was terrifying; here, moments of sincerity, even tenderness, creep in before being shattered by gunfire. Are they chasing something they can’t quite reach? Or has this very show been shaped by restrictions they could not rebel against? Still, few companies match their brand of anarchic theatre, and it’s going to be interesting to see where their next phase of evolution takes them.

Tag Archives: Summerhall

BABY IN THE MIRROR

★★★½

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

BABY IN THE MIRROR

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★½

“a gentle, intimate hour with moments of truth and tenderness”