There are many, many outrageous moments in The Appointment, the wonderfully squirm-inducing abortion-themed satirical musical from Lightning Rod Special (Underground Railroad Game) at off-Broadway’s WP Theater.
To name just a few: the opening scene, where a group of fetuses make such declarations as “I’m as big as an olive,” “I’m as big as a taco,” and “I’m as big as a stuffed crust pizza with pepperoncini and broccoli rabe”; their first musical number, where they dance in a cluster that calls to mind Sweet Charity’s “Rich Man’s Frug”; the audience interaction, where three fetuses roam the audience, searching for, among other things, potential daddies (don’t be surprised if you end up with an umbilical cord in your face); the song “Rip Me Out” (“Put down your forceps!/ The world’s at my doorstep,/ But I’d rather die!”); and a Thanksgiving dinner where the turkey comes to life.
All of those things? Zany, and outlandishly funny. And, in the case of the talking turkey, a bit puzzling. The most outrageous moments, however, happen in a medical clinic, when Dr. Parsons (Underground Railroad Game author and star Scott R. Sheppard) asks a patient, Louise (Alice Yorke), during her ultrasound, what she sees on the screen. “I see…a little circle. Inside of another little circle. I mean it’s blurry. It’s kind of…moving a little bit. It’s in black and white—I don’t know,” she answers. The doctor continues to fulfill his legal obligations, explaining that what she’s seeing is the fetus: “And I am also required by law to ask if you would like to hear the heartbeat, but you don’t have to say yes.” She says no. (Yorke and Sheppard coauthored the book with director Eva Steinmetz and Alex Bechtel, who provided the music, lyrics, and arrangements, and also plays keyboards onstage with the three-piece band.) Note that Lightning Rod Special first presented The Appointment in 2019, three years before the Supreme Court took away the constitutional right to abortion with its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Dr. Parsons then meets with Louise and a few other patients for a misinformation-filled session that concludes with an over-the-top testimonial-filled doo-wop ballad entitled “What Have I Done?”; it’s completely ridiculous, sung by the doctor and his two male aides (Danny Wilfred and Jaime Maseda), but also…please don’t let Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis see this, or they’ll take it as gospel.
The real truths come, as you’d expect, from the women, in the waiting-room-set “Tuesday Song,” a quartet performed by a stone-faced Yorke, Katie Gould, Lee Minora, and Brett Ashley Robinson. “I’m not every woman./ I don’t even want to be,” they sing, methodically turning pages of magazines, ripping them out, crumbling them up, and tossing them to the floor. That’s the scene conservative lawmakers should see—especially coming up on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade—but would they even care?
The Appointment opened Jan. 19, 2023, at the WP Theater and runs through Feb. 4. Tickets and information: theappointmentmusical.com
