Burton Taylor Theatre, Tue January 30th 2007 - Sat February 3rd 2007

I agree - mostly. Our group had an idea of what to expect but clearly people around us were a bit uneasy when we began to laugh. Web reviews of other productions around the world say much the same.

Living in the most deprived parts of East London, we see and work with most of these characters . I monitor the performance of adult mental health social care. It can be infuriating, hilarious and tragic - sometimes at the same time. And I set up a regeneration programme to work with hard-to-reach individuals and families in East London. Quite simply, the play comes close to life. The rest of our party also see these characters and scenarios both through their work and because of where we live. Of course, while taking things to extremes, it also touches lightly on issues within normal family life. How does anyone turn out even relatively sane and stable?

We all found the play and this production excellent. Dialogue was clear. Timing was tight. Casting seemed right. Not all the cast seemed comfortable with the comedy. Perhaps the play and this production really shine in exposing this raw spot where humour and embarrassment collide in sophisticated play-goers. So it is not so much about the characters but our response to mental health.

Steve from Beckton 15 Feb 2007

There should be a warning on the poster for “Baby with the Bathwater“, made out especially for those as unfamiliar as I was with Christopher Durang, that what we were about to watch was going to be rather absurd.

The setting had good potential: The baby of the title is a certain Daisy who is being raised by inept parents, John and Helen, in a home more resembling a madhouse, on a set that opted for minimalism. This pair demonstrate their inability to govern their child: firstly they rely upon a Mary Poppins-esque nanny to look after the baby, and she soon resorts to cries of “shut up!” to silence the child. Next they allow a pregnant teenager to abduct Daisy. And throughout, they show their own personal blemishes through their frenetic boomeranging between ballistics and listless self-pity. The hook in the situation is that the useless parents choose to bring up the baby as a girl, regardless of Daisy actually being male.

As the play proceeds Daisy grows up and shows eccentric character traits, many brought on by the faults the parents have committed earlier in the play, such as Daisy believing herself to be a baked potato, a monomer she received still in the crib. Interesting characters briefly appear such as gossiping mothers, a well-intentioned teacher and a headmistress-come-self-appointed-school-psychiatrist, seemingly plagued by manifold sexual idiosyncracies. In the second half the mood abruptly changes as we are shown snippets of the hundreds of counselling sessions that Daisy has to undergo. Paul Kalizewski ably carries off Daisy’s monologues and powerfully conveys the confusion of the gender-confused, and “so depressed” adolescent and adult that Daisy is to become.

The main complaint one could frame against this piece however is that the writing is a mishmash of disparate comedic and serious moments that sadly seldom gel to produce either hilarious humour or effective empathy. Most of the characters remain undeveloped and a lot of the comedy and the seriousness is drowned out in overwrought absurdity. This unfortunately leaves the audience rather unfazed by and uninformed of the critical issues of the play such as the difficulty of raising a child, abuse of authority and miscommunication. What did work well were the one-liners delivered by the parents in response to their situation. Philip Gemmel, playing the father, delivered his lines better and better throughout the performance, until left as a vodka-swilling and literally inactive father, for whom we feel both sympathy and humour. Alexandra Murphy was very believable as a mother although her hysteria often pitched too close to unsubtle madness and became plain annoying on occasion. Angela Marshall made a fantastic nymphomaniac as the principal, but a rather exaggerated nanny, whilst Roisin Watson showed great comic timing as both the pregnant teenager and Miss Pringle, the worried schoolteacher.

All in all the play come across as a light-hearted sitcom instead of an ingenious comedy that could make you laugh and make you think. The serious moments such as the therapy were lost amidst the one-dimensional, over-acted and stereotypical roles, rendering what could have been absurdist, in fact silly and tiresome.

Dave Coghill 31 Jan 2007

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