3 / 5 stars
Hampstead theatre, London
Sophie Stone as Child in Mine at the Hampstead Theatre, London
Sophie Stone as Child in Mine at the Hampstead theatre, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Tristram Kenton/Guardian

She is a successful home and style journalist and TV presenter. He is an architect designing homes for multi-millionaires. They live in a beautiful white house and lead beautiful lives. But their infertility leaves an aching void, which is filled by the arrival of three-week-old Beauty, taken away from drug addict and prostitute Rose, who is deemed an unsuitable mother by social services. But what makes a good enough mother?

Teale's central couple (Katy Stephens and Alistair Petrie) are so deeply unsympathetic and self-obsessed that you doubt whether social services would be right to trust them with a kitten, let alone a baby. But there is no doubting the fact that Polly Teale's play, which she also directs, taps straight into contemporary parenting anxieties.

It bravely tackles issues that sometimes don't even make it into the discussion boards of parenting websites: the way that looking after a baby can make you feel as if you have shed several layers of skin and are walking around like an open wound; those 4am moments when the baby won't stop crying, and you want to throw it out of the window. Or the day when the child you love and raised, turns round and tells you that you did it all wrong - they're unhappy, and it's all your fault.

Mine is an overstuffed bag of ideas, rather than a fully fledged drama. The fairytale motif is handled effectively, particularly in the spooky use of film, but sometimes feels a little meaningfully heavy-handed. But the evening whizzes by and has a fierce emotional honesty that wins you over.