Confession: I’ve never been much for babies, but I’ve always been terribly fond of Baby.
The bouncy score by Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire is packed with toe-tapping, instantly memorable songs; from “We Start Today” to “The Story Goes On” to “And What If We Had Loved Like That,” to name just a few, truly, there’s not a clunker among them. (Side note: What was in the water in the 1983–84 Broadway season? Baby, La Cage aux Folles, The Rink, The Tap Dance Kid, and Sunday in the Park With George. That is some selection of musicals.) Now, thanks to Out of the Box Theatrics’ extremely intimate, heart-on-its-sleeve production, those terrific tunes are stuck in my head once again.
Out of the Box first decided to, as director Ethan Paulini described it before the show, “bring Baby into the 21st century” in 2019; this revival of the revival continues the company’s rethink of the original, a story of three (white heterosexual) couples of varying ages going through pregnancies. In the current version, students Lizzie (Elizabeth Flemming) and Danny (Johnny Link), who did not plan to have a baby as juniors in college, are legally blind and deaf, respectively. The struggling-to-conceive middle couple—formerly Nick and Pam—are now Nicki (Jamila Sabares-Klemm) and Pam (a dynamite Danielle Summons), both women of color. And empty-nesters Arlene (Julia Murney, wonderfully wry) and Alan (Robert H. Fowler) are an interracial couple. “What remains is the beloved score,” writes Paulini in his director’s note, “but just about everything else is new.”
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
There have been some tiny tweaks to the score. For instance, in Lizzie, Pam, and Arlene’s name-dropping song “I Want It All”: “I want to be Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Annie Hall” has become “I want to be Michelle Obama, Nora Ephron, Annie Hall”; “I want to be Katherine Hepburn, Connie Chung, Madame de Staël” is now “I want to be Serena Williams, Meryl Streep, Madame de Staël” (kudos for keeping the early-19th-century French feminist literary reference!); thankfully, “I want to be Donna McKechnie/ Donna Summer/ Donna Reed” remains unchanged, because some people are simply timeless. But Sybille Pearson’s book has been basically overhauled. For instance, Danny to Lizzie on their origin story: “You and I met in a support group because our ‘Woke’ college wants to become ‘inclusive of disabilities.’” The fertility doctor (Jewell Noel) discussing sperm donors with Pam and Nicki: “Did you pick the Nigerian Rhodes Scholar who spoke seven languages and was a concert pianist?” No, says Pam, they went with “the trumpet-playing hockey star with a PhD, and who says he looks a little like Idris Elba.”
This Baby is on its way, but still has some growing to do. Too many of the book scenes bring the show to a screeching halt, and are in desperate need of trimming. (The aforementioned in-vitro exchange is the worst offender, though a late-show argument between Danny and Lizzie runs a close second.) And it feels petty to dis Out of the Box’s space, but a few more square feet—and perhaps a room without a pillar practically in the middle of the stage—would do wonders for this production. Baby is an emotional show, and when the whole room (including the audience!) is entirely lit, it’s hard to get completely lost in the story. I’m still not sure how I got through Danny’s bus station ballad “I Chose Right” without crying; I suppose it was fortunate that I was looking at Link’s back for most of the song.
Baby opened Nov. 14, 2021, at Theaterlab and runs through Dec. 12. Tickets and information: ootbtheatrics.com
