Life Before You
“I can’t care for you when you’re like this — can’t love you when you’re like this — you need to be— you need to be better.”
Gráinne leaves Ardoyne, Belfast, for England, chasing the promise of a better life for her daughter. She scrubs, she bleaches, she sacrifices— and piece by piece, she begins to disappear.
Eimear grows up surrounded by privilege, stepping through doors her mother could never open. But with every step forward, she drifts further away — into another class, another name, another life.
As they clash over diverging ideas of womanhood, what surfaces is complex and turbulent, straining their relationships — with themselves and with each other — to breaking point.
Life Before You, a fierce and unflinching new play by Eva Hudson, lays bare the fault lines between mothers and daughters. Addressing women’s healthcare, class, survival, and the erasure of aging women, it asks: what do we pass on, and how do we escape the lives written for us?
Content to Consider
The age guidance for this show is 12+. This show contains moderate language, flashing lights and themes relating to women’s healthcare, ageing, class, family conflict
and sexual violence. Products containing gluten, barley, celeriac, cereal, oats, wheat, rye are consumed on stage.
Studio Event
Please note that this performance takes place in our smaller Studio Theatre. If it’s your first visit or you are unfamiliar with the Mercury building, you can find out more about our spaces here.
Videos
Production photos
Credit: Edward J Felton
Cast
Grainne Hayley-Marie Axe
Eimear (multirole) Georgia Alexandra
Creatives
Writer Eva Hudson
Director & Producer Roisin McCay-Hines
Designers Jasmine Thompson & Abigail Manard
Producer Mentor Emma Gibson
Dramaturgical Mentor Sarah Dickenson
Technical Stage Manager Louis Gulliver King
Assistant Director Izzy Ponsford
Rehearsal Photographer & Videographer Zoe Birkbeck
Production Photographer Edward J Felton
“Axe gives a performance that is volatile, tender and deeply human. She allows Gráinne’s anger to coexist with vulnerability, never reducing her to martyr or villain. Alexandra brings clarity and physical intelligence to Eimear, capturing both her ambition and her guilt.”
Stage Talk Magazine on Life Before You
“Hudson’s writing had me second guessing everything I thought I knew going into the play…Incredible scriptwriting from her, a deeply mesmerising watch.”
Broadway World on 855-For-Truth
“A masterclass in storytelling”
North West End on Cold, Dark Matters
“A triumph”
StageTalk Magazine on The Fall of the House of Usher
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