Review: ‘Cry It Out’ — Clarence Brown Theatre – The Lab Theatre

 

Molly Smith Metzler’s play, Cry It Out, may be set in a backyard in the New York City suburb of Port Washington, Long Island, but it covers a lot of territory inhabited by new mothers—unaware husbands, daycare, breastfeeding, loneliness, guilt, and the broad category of how one’s socio-economic status looms indiscriminately over all. The title itself refers to the questionable baby sleep training technique of ignoring the nighttime crying of infants in order to establish self-reliance. Of course, Metzler’s “crying it out” has much more to do with unhappy mothers than with unhappy infants.

This Clarence Brown Theatre production in the Lab Theatre of Metzler’s Cry It Out features four actors in the MFA acting program and well as a creative staff of both faculty and MFA designers.

We find ourselves in the grassy Port Washington backyard of Jessie (Gabriela Bulka), a Manhattan attorney on maternity leave, who, in her baby care isolation, discovers a cup-of-coffee friendship with her neighbor, the spirited and brash Lina (Deepika Jayan). They meet at the point of maximum range of their individual baby monitors in something of a metaphor of a friendship based on geography rather than similarities. Although their personalities are drastically different, each of them supplies support and friendship the other needs, the details of which build the characters little by little.

Jessie, as an educated law professional, has married into a family of comfortable affluence. In contrast, Lina and her under-employed boyfriend are living in his alcoholic mother’s house, and is on leave from her job as a hospital receptionist. Their friendship blossoms over time as their common baby-rearing experiences—breastfeeding, neighborhood issues, and lack of spousal understanding—outweigh their differences in background.

The pair’s conversation covers all the expected issues, but several loom large in deliciously described detail. Jessie is trying to find a way to tell her husband that she wants to remain a stay-at-home mom. For Lina, she fears leaving the baby in incompetent hands, but her own background and socio-economic constraints make it impossible to stay at home any longer.

Their backyard bonding suffers an out-of-the-blue intrusion when Mitchell (Denzel Dejournette), a neighbor from the affluent heights of Sands Point, appears in the backyard with a strange request. He explains that he has been observing the pair and their coffee friendship via a telescope and was wondering if they would be willing to include his wife, Adrienne (Yashashvi Choudhary), in their socializing. Although they hesitatingly agree to the meeting, it doesn’t go well. Adrienne, a well-known jewelry designer who is also a new mother, resents her husband’s attempt. She shows it with an undercurrent of rudeness and jabs of upscale elitism. She eventually stalks off, throwing out her exit with a contemptuous vulgarity. Mitchell lets us in on what he believes is the reality: probable postpartum depression in which she has been neglecting her baby, leaving the job to nannies and housekeepers.

Director Jessica Holt has kept the dialog banter between the two women witty and fresh, although the pacing ebb and flow seemed to struggle at times. Importantly, though, she has recognized and accentuated the playwright’s depiction of the economic issues confronting new mothers: affluence, middle-income, and poverty each influence the post-birth period of parents in different and unequal ways. In fact, it is something of a dramatic revelation when Jessie faces her own reality that she must return to work, taking advantage of her in-law provided expensive childcare. 

Scenic designer Kenneth Martin has created a realistic backyard for Jessie, complete with suburban “barndoors,” a rain barrel, garden hose, and motion-activated security lights, all backed with a projected blue sky and fluffy white clouds. Interestingly, though, Holt has confined the characters to a very limited part of the “yard” which subconsciously suggests the imposed lack of freedom the characters inevitably feel. Lighting designer Mitch Wilson offered a nice variety of day/night effects. Costume designer Alex Heder made a point of stay-at-home comfort clothes. Amorrie Perteet contributed to the realism with apt sound effects and transitional music.

Cry It Out presents a mix of emotions for viewing: love, guilt, loneliness, rage—with agonies that both sadden us and make us laugh. Hopefully, time has a way of smoothing out the rough edges of life.