AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Christina Anderson's Inked Baby, which opened at Playwrights Horizons last night, starts of as a delicately and warmly crafted exploration of the complicated emotions that surround surrogate pregnancies. At about the halfway point of this play, which does introduce a playwright of great promise, its focal point changes, and it becomes a play about the health ramifications of environmental pollution. While the corporate dumping has a direct impact on the former aspect of the play – Gloria (LaChanze) may have been unable to become pregnant because of the unhealthy conditions that have surrounded her all of her life – there's a strange disconnect between the two aspects of the play, which though intriguing never fully satisfies.

The woman to whom Gloria and her husband Greer (Damon Gupton) turn to help begin their family is Gloria's sister Lena (Angela Lewis), who has just received a healthy severance package from the New York financial firm where she worked, making her return to the suburban town where she was born possible. As "Baby" charts the awkward tensions that arise from Lena's surrogacy – which occurred not via in vitro fertilization, but from the act of Greer making love to her – the play fascinates and features a trio of intricately etched performances. LaChanze and Gupton beautifully capture both hopefulness that Gloria and Greer feel about the new addition to their family and the jealousy, suspicion and ill-ease that crops up in the marriage. Lewis deftly brings to life both Lena's ambivalence about her return home and her genuine affection for her sister and brother-in-law.

When the episodic play, staged by Kate Whoriskey, currently represented off-Broadway with Ruined, darts to a doctor's examining room, and not one where Lena goes for her regular checkups, though, "Baby" misfires. This examination centers on Lena's high school friend Ky (Nikkole Salter), who finds herself being "sampled" at the request of her employers. A medical assistant not only cuts some of Ky's hair, but also extracts a tooth. Anderson's writing, and Whoriskey's direction, almost make the moment seem vaguely like something out of a futuristic sci fi tale, and the sequence jars the audience immeasurably, making it difficult to return to the more intimate and straightforward family drama that has been unfolding.

Anderson continues to keep the "sampling" process something of a mystery as she also details the escalating problems between Greer and Gloria, which include an affair that Gloria has with Odlum (Che Ayende), a tattoo artist from the bad side of town. The affair is, of course, a way in which Gloria can reassert her femininity in the face of her sister's pregnancy on her behalf. It's potentially poignant and pungent storytelling, but as the "Baby" vacillates from the family drama to the more ominous, and somewhat conspiracy-laden, plot about the health problems facing the characters, theatergoers remain strangely detached, despite the winning performances.

Whoriskey's sometimes too leisurely direction, and Andromache Chalfant's scenic design – which frames the action within white stucco bricks that puts the performers at a strange remove from audiences, only enhances theatergoers' emotional distance from "Baby," which has what should be a crushing denouement. "Baby" represents Anderson's off-Broadway debut as a playwright, and the varied pieces of the script, and its often incisive dialogue, point toward greater things. Inked Baby may not truly satisfy, but it is terrific to see a new voice arrive with such an ambitious piece.

---- Andy Propst

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Inked Baby plays at Playwrights Horizons (416 West 42nd Street). Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30PM; Saturday at 2 & 7:30PM and Sunday at 2 & 7:00PM. Tickets are $50.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-279-4200 or by visiting www.TicketCentral.com. Further information is available online at www.PlaywrightsHorizons.org.

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New York Times

Lurking Beneath Surface: Domestic Strife and Illness
Nobody seems to like talking much in “Inked Baby,” a listless new play by Christina Anderson.

New York Daily News

Sister pact: To surrogate with love
Chances are you’ve never had a heart-to-heart with a pretzel. But in the twisty new drama “Inked Baby,” an expectant father who’s adrift does exactly that when he pours his guts out to a salty snack food he calls Petey.

New York Post

Review: Pretzel Logic
When a character starts talking to a pretzel, it doesn't bode well for a show. If the pretzel has a name and talks back, the shark has been jumped. By the time Greer (Damon Gupton) has his soulful man-to-snack exchange with Petey (uncredited), "Inked Baby" is pretty much beyond repair. And we're not even halfway through this...

Variety

Review: Inked Baby
In her quiet but deeply moving drama "Inked Baby," Christina Anderson applies a feather-light touch to the tender topic of surrogate child-bearing. Anything heavier than a feather and her fragile characters would surely shatter.

Back Stage

Inked Baby reviewed by Leonard Jacobs
How do playwrights know their story can stand on its own — that additional plot strands aren't needed to round out the experience?

TheaterMania

Review: Inked Baby
Christina Anderson's promising but frustrating new play about a troubled marriage combines two stylistically different narratives

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Inked Baby
...is appropriate in more ways than one. It’s packed with characters so sharply drawn they may as well have sprung fully formed from Anderson’s mind and pen. The infant of the title is marked before its birth for reasons it will never understand and the adults in its life will never be able to justify. And amid the delicately drawn and carefully blended ...

CurtainUp

Review: Inked Baby
Environmental problems turn familial tensions into a surreal nightmare

 

Updates for March 24, 2009:

New York Post

Cindy Adams: Thank 'God' for a delicious new play

Time Out New York

Review: God of Carnage
All-star cast rips into Yasmina Reza's comedy

Hartford Courant

'God Of Carnage' Is Gripping, Intensely Acted

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - God of Carnage
Adults Behaving Badly

New York Times

Rumble in the Living Room
“God of Carnage” definitely delivers the cathartic release of watching other people’s marriages go boom.

New York Daily News

Oh, 'God of Carnage,' that's whacky theater
James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano himself, is one of four first-class actors at the top of their game in the combustible comedy “God of Carnage,” which opened Sunday night and could be called “Grownups Gone Wild!”

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of God of Carnage
It was supposed to be so calm and civil. Michael and Veronica had arranged to meet with Alan and Annette to discuss the playground brawl that broke out between their 11-year-old sons that resulted in two broken teeth. The middle aged couples tried to negotiate a settlement where they would formally apologize. Sounds pretty reasonable, right..

Newsday

Theater review: 'God of Carnage'
It's a jungle up there. What fun. The two middle-aged couples in the artsy-stark Brooklyn town house only appear to be civilized parents discussing a playground fight between their 11-year-old boys. Pay attention to the opening music. Those tribal drums are hardly incidental.

New York Post

Upper middle-class clowns
'We're not living in Kin hasa!" cries the well- heeled Veronica. "What goes on in Cobble Hill Park re flects the values of Western society!" Based on what precedes that outburst, said values include selfishness, amorality, neuroticism, arrogance and cruelty perfect ingredients for a comedy. After making you laugh...

ny1

NY1 Theater Review: "God Of Carnage"

The New Yorker

John Lahr: “West Side Story” and “God of Carnage” on Broadway.

Bergen Record

The unhappy marriage was never more of a pleasure
Evenings in the theater don't get any funnier than "God of Carnage," Yasmina Reza's romp through the weed-filled garden of modern marriage.

Associated Press

'God of Carnage' Hilariously Trashes Civility
Calling Miss Manners.

Bloomberg.com

Gandolfini, Daniels Turn Playground Brawl Into Class Warfare: John Simon
Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” with Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, proves superior entertainment at Broadway’s Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. What a pleasant surprise to share a walloping good time with the audience at this comedy, whose ferocious title paradoxically reinforces the subtly furibund fun.

USA Today

'God of Carnage,' 'Blithe Spirit' lifting spirits on Broadway

Variety

Review: God of Carnage
Examining how the straitjacket of civilized society can barely contain the primitive beast within,"God of Carnage" picks an easy target in the complacent bourgeoisie. But the savagery of its dissection of interpersonal politics is played to perfection by a scorching cast in Matthew Warchus' pungent production.

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: God of Carnage
Bottom Line: It might not be "Art," but Yasmina Reza's hilarious boulevard comedy should be a raving Broadway success.

Back Stage

God of Carnage reviewed by David Sheward [critic's pick]
Two sets of upper-middle-class parents amicably meet to settle a schoolyard dispute between their young sons. With generous helpings of alcohol, the adults become as irrational and bad-tempered as their kids.

TheaterMania

Review: God of Carnage
Yasmina Reza's entertaining and soigne comedy about warring parents is well directed and beautifully performed.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: God of Carnage
How often is the worst day of your life also the funniest? To the four characters in Yasmina Reza’s blisteringly outrageous new play God of Carnage, which just opened at the Jacobs, it occurs with alarming regularity. ...

nytheatre.com

Review: God of Carnage

Chicago Tribune

James Gandolfini stars in 'God of Carnage'
"God of Carnage," the savvy and deliciously caustic new comedy of urban ill-manners from the French writer Yasmina Reza now at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre, shoots its entire clip of sardonic bullets in just 90 minutes.

Los Angeles Times Culture Monster Blog

Review of "God of Carnage" on Broadway
Reporting from New York—Civilization’s thin veneer gets mercilessly stripped in “God of Carnage,” French playwright Yasmina Reza’s savage comedy about two urban couples attempting to maturely resolve an altercation that occurred between their 11-year-old sons in a neighborhood park. This quartet fits the demographic that European writers and filmmakers love to defile—affluent, well-educated and liberal (sort of like their audience). In other words, don’t count on the characters setting a sterling example for the kids.