Customer Reviews

Baby With the Bathwater

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Famous for his dark, absurdist comedies, Christopher Durang focuses on parenthood and early childhood here, creating a strange play in which John and Helen, new parents who have no clue about their own lives, try to cope with parenthood and its unfamiliar and unpleasant demands. Bringing home the baby, they argue about the father's reference to the baby as a "baked potato," the mother's demand for a divorce (her husband has blond hair and "I like men with dark hair"), the fact that they know nothing about toilet training and can't afford to hire someone to train the child, and a host other non-issues.

Suddenly Nanny arrives, unbidden, with her own set of demands and a device to get the baby to stop crying--a box from which a spring-loaded snake pops out, scaring it into silence. Further complications develop when a strange young girl arrives and decides to take the baby to Florida because her dog ate her own baby.

The first act, originally a one-act play, feels like one, with little development and farce-like, frantic activity which bears no resemblance to real life. The second act takes "baby" to adulthood, offering complications and glimpses of reality which make the play far more potent and more dramatic. "Baby," a four-year-old boy now called Daisy and dressed as a girl, enjoys challenging buses, which somehow always manage to stop in time. Helen, the mother, is trying to become a writer, having had success as the author of the Cliff's Notes for the books Princess Daisy and Scruples. John, the father, is unemployed and often crouches beside the refrigerator.

As Daisy grows, he has trouble in school and college, where he cannot finish a paper on Jonathan Swift for many years. He is unhappy, trying to find out who he really is, and anxious to find some peace in his life. Ultimately, he grows, unusual in an absurdist comedy, giving an emotional core to the second half of this play. The ending suggests hope for the future.

Not quite unified, the play features the same main characters in both halves of the play, but the focus of the humor changes. In Act One the humor is bold but shallow, more farce-like than in Act Two, which focuses on the damage that John and Helen have done to Daisy/Alexander and the suffering they have caused. Not as dark as The Marriage of Bette and Boo or as dramatic and satiric as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Baby with the Bathwater is Durang-Lite. Mary Whipple

Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays

Miss Witherspoon and Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge: Two Plays

Beyond Therapy

Sister Mary Explains It All, film which bears too little resemblance to the original play

Beyond Therapy, VHS version

Famous for his dark, absurdist comedies, Christopher Durang focuses on parenthood and early childhood here, creating a strange play in which John and Helen, new parents who have no clue about their own lives, try to cope with parenthood and its unfamiliar and unpleasant demands. Bringing home the baby, they argue about the father's reference to the baby as a "baked potato," the mother's demand for a divorce (her husband has blond hair and "I like men with dark hair"), the fact that they know nothing about toilet training and can't afford to hire someone to train the child, and a host other non-issues.

Suddenly Nanny arrives, unbidden, with her own set of demands and a device to get the baby to stop crying--a box from which a spring-loaded snake pops out, scaring it into silence. Further complications develop when a strange young girl arrives and decides to take the baby to Florida because her dog ate her own baby.

The first act, originally a one-act play, feels like one, with little development and farce-like, frantic activity which bears no resemblance to real life. The second act takes "baby" to adulthood, offering complications and glimpses of reality which make the play far more potent and more dramatic. "Baby," a four-year-old boy now called Daisy and dressed as a girl, enjoys challenging buses, which somehow always manage to stop in time. Helen, the mother, is trying to become a writer, having had success as the author of the Cliff's Notes for the books Princess Daisy and Scruples. John, the father, is unemployed and often crouches beside the refrigerator.

As Daisy grows, he has trouble in school and college, where he cannot finish a paper on Jonathan Swift for many years. He is unhappy, trying to find out who he really is, and anxious to find some peace in his life. Ultimately, he grows, unusual in an absurdist comedy, giving an emotional core to the second half of this play. The ending suggests hope for the future.

Not quite unified, the play features the same main characters in both halves of the play, but the focus of the humor changes. In Act One the humor is bold but shallow, more farce-like than in Act Two, which focuses on the damage that John and Helen have done to Daisy/Alexander and the suffering they have caused. Not as dark as The Marriage of Bette and Boo or as dramatic and satiric as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All, Baby with the Bathwater is Durang-Lite. n Mary Whipple