When comedian Janine Harouni got pregnant, she had the idea that her baby might be an interesting topic for a new show, so she brought it up with her director and friend, Adam Brace. “You know who else thinks their baby might make an interesting show?” he replied. “Everybody with a baby.”
Eventually, Brace came around to the idea, with the caveat: “If you name your kid after me I’ll fucking honor-kill you.” (Spoiler: She did not.) So pretty much everything about her journey to parenthood—including a formative experience involving two-for-one magic mushroom shakes on a beach in Thailand—is fair game in Man’oushe, Harouni’s winning one-woman show at Soho Playhouse. Also fair game: her lighter-than-light-skinned Irish husband, Andrew (who does a short, and probably unnecessary, opening act); when Harouni, a Staten Island, N.Y., native of Lebanese descent, moved to the U.K., where the couple now lives, she discovered “shades of pale I’d never seen before.”
So you can expect a detailed and lengthy list of “normal symptoms of pregnancy”—among them, dizziness, migraines, vomiting, bleeding gums (that’s just the start), which are eerily equivalent to the “normal symptoms of living too near a nuclear power plant”; a brief account of her experience giving birth via C-section in a U.K. teaching hospital (where she heard the senior doctor say, “Mmm, now what I would have done differently there…”); and an emotional recounting of the check-up when she and Andrew first see the baby and hear its heartbeat on the scan. “Can you believe it? We’re creating a human being!” says Andrew. “No, I’m creating a human being,” she replies. “I’m a god. You’re an ingredient.”
And she doesn’t gloss over the difficult parts: first, her silent miscarriage, which she wound up spontaneously confessing to a complete stranger—a hairdresser “who gave me the worst bangs of my life” and who, it turns out, also had a miscarriage. Second, Brace’s unexpected death in April 2023 at the age of 43. (The night I attended, at that intense moment, just before Harouni told us about Brace having a stroke—wouldn’t you know it—a cellphone rang. She took it in stride, commenting on the terrible timing and gamely poking fun at the outdated ringtone. But for the love of Patti LuPone, please, people, turn off your phones!)
Brace, who directed the hour-long Man’oushe with Jon Brittain (Baby Reindeer), had a knack for working with comedians, and a track record for transforming a one-person show into a piece of theater. (Perhaps because he had been a playwright and dramaturg himself.) Among the works he put his stamp on: Liz Kingsman’s One Woman Show and Alex Edelman’s Emmy- and Obie-winning Just for Us. And now Man’oushe. The translation of which, in case you’re wondering—and I know you are—is pizza. So…Netflix special when?
Janine Harouni: Man’oushe opened December 5, 2024, at Soho Playhouse and runs through December 21. Tickets and information: sohoplayhouse.com
