Gush review – Jessica Hardwick is superb as a mother-to-be surfing a maelstrom of emotions

Jess Brodie’s monologue about life on the brink of parenthood is both witty and gripping

There are few transitions in life more profound than becoming a parent. Out go late nights and long lie-ins. In comes responsibility. It is an experience that demands redefinition, turning you from cared-for to carer, solo player to team captain. Even as it approaches, you know it will change you.

This is the still point of the turning world that playwright Jess Brodie identifies: not the birth, but the moment before. A time to look back, reflect and reappraise as much as to speculate on the unknown path ahead.

Tenderly stroking an enormous belly, Ally has all the anxieties of the first-time mother-to-be: the uncomfortable nights, the avoidance of toxic foods, the clock-watching of maternity leave. She also has a sense of unfinished business. Still to work out her first identity, she is about to transform again – this time into somebody’s mum.

At its best, this is what Brodie’s monologue is about: not the familiar stresses of pregnancy as much as a less-explored quest for self-realisation. The impending birth is like a timebomb, ticking ever louder as Ally races to figure out whether this middle-class life with her neurotic, controlling and overworked partner is one to which she is fully committed.

Could it be time to listen to those sexual urges she has so successfully denied herself until now?

As a theme for a play, it is narrow in focus, its politics self-absorbed. Gush has no interest in the world beyond Ally’s maelstrom of feelings. Even her feminist desire to stop people-pleasing and demand more for herself feels solipsistic. But Brodie writes with wit and fluency, springing narrative surprises as she goes. She keeps a tight grip on her audience.

Above all, in Becky Hope-Palmer’s fine-tuned studio production, Jessica Hardwick gives a superb performance. On a set by Becky Minto that is half brittle white surface, half inviting pool of cushions – a symbol of the play’s tension between the alien and the cosy – the actor surfs the waves of emotion with tremendous sensitivity. Her voice sonorous and precise, she brilliantly captures Brodie’s switches in tone from ironic to panicked, embarrassed to erotic, furious to funny. Gush is worth seeing for her performance alone.

• At Traverse theatre, Edinburgh, until 25 April