After Sally Brooks’s friend Suzanne dies, her extremely ordered and private life is turned upside down when Suzanne’s bereaved husband Peter and young daughter Harper enter it. Whilst Sally feels compelled to help them, she finds that becoming a first-time parent to an excitable and emotional child isn’t easy…

Based on her real life experiences, Brooks expertly blends comedy and drama in this one-woman show as she learns to break down her firmly established childhood boundaries to become part of a grieving family. She starts out strongly with quietly poignant descriptions of how time stands still for her in the immediate moments of Suzanne’s death and her realisation that she can’t abandon Peter and Harper.

Brooks’s experiences raising Harper manage to skilfully interweave the lighter moments of dealing with her at her most excitable and her struggles at having to handle Harper’s anger and emotional lashing out over losing her mother without the transitions between tones ever seeming jarring.

This approach makes what could have been a cliched, rose-tinted narrative of a stepmother bonding with her stepdaughter feel so authentic because Brooks isn’t afraid to tackle the difficulties of entering this new life from a position of enforced solitary self-control.

Her emphasis on how trying to help Harper enabled her to overcome her traumatic childhood impulse to repress her emotions helps with this feeling of authenticity. It shows how, in a way, she has had to grow up along with Harper and that the two have had to ‘come of age’ together.

Brooks herself is excellent in making the audience feel every emotional high and low of her journey with Harper. From humorously and graphically recounting emergency goldfish surgery to dealing with feeling unwanted on a family holiday she organised, Brooks takes the audience on a ride through the full range of emotions she experiences and brings every story to life with her energetic stage presence. The overall result is by the halfway point, the audience is fully invested in Sally and her blended family, wanting them to overcome every obstacle and make it work for the future.

STAY is both funny and heartwarming as well as engaging in its recounting of how an unlikely relationship helped two people to grow together. Brooks is a born performer and storyteller who knows how to keep an audience enthralled.

STAY is at The Penny at Gilded Balloon Patter House until Sun 30 Aug 2026