Performances are impeccable (and laughs are abundant, at least in Act One), but by the time Laila Ayad, Anna Rose Hopkins, Courtney Sauls, Sonal Shah, Jenny Soo, and Sarah Utterback finally take their bows (at close to 11:00 p.m. on Opening Night), a more suitable title for Nina Braddock’s Untitled Baby Play would be Interminable Baby Play.

Pregnant tenure-track professor Libby remains offstage throughout as six of her friends (half of them childhood chums, the other half from her Middlebury College years) exchange emails about their bff’s impending baby shower, then gather in assorted groupings in Libby’s guest bathroom on the day of said event.

These email exchanges, interspersed with occasional face-to-face encounters, allow us to get to know six very different women up close and personal.

Medical researcher Penny (Shah) bubbles like a just-opened can of soda pop as she excitedly micromanages every step of Libby’s upcoming shower.

Freelance journalist Eden (Utterback) does yoga pose after pose while agonizing over the case of a Dominican woman unjustly imprisoned for over thirty years and counting.

Overworked second grade teacher Gillian (Sauls) seems lit from within with the joy of forming young minds (and makes sure to end each of her rare email responses with a favorite “signature quote”).

Consultant Meredith (Ayad) is so work obsessed and time constrained that it seems unlikely any shower date will fit her crowded schedule, and what’s with the hairs that keep popping up on her chin?

Cater waitress Natalia (Hopkins) would much rather be earning her living as a working actor, but for that she’d actually have to get cast in the experimental play she’s preparing to audition for.

And computer software analyst Clara (Soo) is so exhausted taking care of the baby she stays home nursing while wife Bridget is off bringing home the bacon that she doesn’t have the time or energy join the group chat until long into the email thread.

The sextet’s online exchanges earn plenty of laughs (as do a couple of shopping trips for baby clothes) until it becomes clear that not all is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows in suburbia, albeit not soon enough in a first act already a good twenty minutes too long.

Unfortunately, Untitled Baby Play’s second act overstays its welcome by another twenty minutes as various groupings share confidences while ensconced in Libby’s guest bathroom, three of the women plopping themselves down on the toilet seat to take a pee.

Adding to the play’s running time are a couple of post-intermission monologs (one about pregnancy, the other about giving birth), acted to the hilt by Hopkins and Soo respectively, but each of them at least twice as long as it should be, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself looking at your watch as the clock hits 10:30 with no end in sight.

Though director Katie Lindsay has done a terrific job eliciting memorable performances from her cast, I can’t help wishing she’d been the outside voice to suggest/insist on much needed trims.

I certainly can’t fault the work being done by Untitled Baby Play’s gifted cast, who inhabit/vanish into six very different characters, with Shah delivering a dazzlingly multi-faceted star turn as a woman whose ebullient exterior hides pain and sorrow she keeps deep within.

At the very least, Untitled Baby Play provides a designers’ showcase for a uniformly crackerjack team headed by set designer Cindy Lin, who alongside properties designer Michael O’Hara (never more impressive than he is here), has given each woman her own distinctive “habitat” in Act One, and a stylish guest loo for Act Two.

Add to this Dan Weingarten’s vibrant lighting, Andrea “Slim” Allmond’s multilayered sound design/original music, and Alexis Chaney’s character-perfect costumes (at least two for each woman) and you’ve got a production that looks and sounds fabulous from start to finish.

Lexi Sloan is lead producer, Paige Hullett is associate producer, and Nikita Chaudhry was pre-production co-producer. Savanha Moore is production stage manager. Melissa Coleman-Reed is associate director. Eli Smith was original set consultant. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

 Casting is by Jordan Bass. Brie Carter, Ari Hader, Ellen Haun, Julia Manis, Kristina Mueller, and Cynthia San Luis are understudies.

It’s rare to find a play that gives voice to issues of fertility and pregnancy, and the problems facing mothers of young infants, so it pains me not to be able to rave about Nina Braddock’s Untitled Baby Play the way I did about Molly Smith Metzler’s similarly themed Cry It Out.

A much shorter Untitled Baby Play might have been just what the script doctor ordered.

IAMA Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.iamatheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
May 26, 2022
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Tags: IAMA Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theater Review, Nina Braddock