This new dad doesn’t deserve a happy ending

The Cord (Bush Theatre, Shepherd’s Bush, London) Verdict: Caught in the parent trap ★★☆☆☆

THEATRE as birth control? In his new work, playwright Bijan Sheibani is washing a new baby’s dirty linen in public. Metaphorically. If it’s not his own experience, he’s found a fearlessly frank mole.

anya and ash have a new baby, Louis. With all the predictable challenges that come with it. Stitches, engorged breasts, exhaustion for anya, in an otherwise underexplored role. and then the unexpected stuff: rivalry between the grandmothers. ash’s mum, Jane, is already feeling like a second-division gran, because anya’s mum has, naturally, been more involved.

When a new baby arrives, everyone’s positions shuffle within the extended family. Moreover, new parents suddenly realise what it must have been like for their own. an unimaginative ash (Irfan Shamji) has been slow to grasp that from now on he just may not be anyone’s top priority. (Perhaps he skipped antenatal classes.) Feeling redundant and neglected as anya breastfeeds, and wanting a bit of sex (far too soon), he is working out where he fits in the new scheme of things.

Sheibani directs his play in the round. actually, it’s a carpeted square of beige, a domestic boxing-ring of sorts, with the cellist, Colin alexander, in one corner, powerfully underscoring the fraught exchanges.

Lucy Black, fresh from Beth Steel’s hit show, Till the Stars Come Down, is particularly good as Jane. Struggling with the guilt of her own postnatal depression, she is nevertheless as unimpressed as we are by her son’s self-absorption.

There’s no doubting the soulbearing honesty of Sheibani’s writing. But with no tension or drama, we feel like eavesdroppers on ash’s therapy session. ash gets there in the end, entranced when Louis really looks at him for the first time. an undeserved happy ending.