Bush theatre, London
Therapists will love this drama about neonatal strains with all its flashbacks to childhood battles. Shame the focus is all on the father, leaving the women looking like harpies
Amid the fuzzy glow from the birth of their son, new parents Ash (Irfan Shamji) and Anya (Eileen O’Higgins) are all bleary smiles. Ash eagerly imparts the knowledge he has picked up online: how the baby “can’t tell what’s him, and what’s not him”. Anya, recovering from medical complications, craves sleep, and some respite from her husband’s passive-aggressive asides about his parents not being allowed at the hospital. The baby is growing, but the couple’s resentments are growing faster.
In The Cord, writer-director Bijan Sheibani demonstrates an ear for those conversational jolts and jabs that can unsettle a domestic situation when it is still as delicate as a newborn’s fontanelle. Ash becomes an unhappy intermediary between Anya and his mother, Jane (Lucy Black), with her insinuating pauses, her little daggers of judgment. She and Ash have their own unresolved issues; as a boy, he wanted to be a doctor so he could “take your pain away”.
