The Soon Life

Only one person delivers a baby and that’s the mother. I love how people are always trying to take credit for that.

Her waters aren’t the only thing breaking. A heavily pregnant, thirty-something woman is in labour. Too scared to go to the hospital in lockdown London, she’s decided to have the ’perfect’ home birth with nothing but a birthing ball and a boxset to get her through it.

Plans are derailed when her ex turns up and refuses to leave. As her labour progresses and with the midwife unreachable, the pair are forced to confront the remnants of their relationship and their breakup before everything changes forever with the arrival of their child.

Winner of the ’Highly Commended’ Prize at the Tony Craze Awards 2020, The Soon Life delivers a funny, gripping, fly-on-the-wall portrait of a woman on the cusp of change.

This edition was published to coincide with the production at Southwark Playhouse in October 2025.

Phoebe McIntosh is an actress and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab programme, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. Phoebe won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing programme and was selected for Penguin Random House’s WriteNow programme.