Theatre review: Baby Mama: One Woman's Quest to Give Her Child to Gay People

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Tales of adoption aren't unusual as dramatic subjects, but it's different (Philomena aside) to find the perspective of a birth mother used as the springboard for such.

Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236)

***

Tales of adoption aren’t unusual as dramatic subjects, but it’s different (Philomena aside) to find the perspective of a birth mother used as the springboard for such.

New York-based playwright and performer Mariah MacCarthy gives us the full immersive experience, however, with this true story of the moment her son was conceived (the birth father is mentioned once, with neither affection nor disdain) to the point at which she finally gave him up to his new fathers. Her comfort with telling this story as a performer is tempered by the difficulty the subject causes her, and we feel the yearning in some moments and the release of humour in others.

MacCarthy is a warm and relatable personality – although not everyone in the audience will share her taste for group sex or the music of Amanda Palmer – and the intricacies of the adoption process are well explained.

Full of frank sex chat and pithy lines about wanting a serious partner so they can “rub my genitals and get me brunch”, this monologue also bears deeper, subtler threads about living with a difficult decision you believe to be right and the effect of lack of financial support for single parents in America.

Until today 7.45pm.