Greg Keller and Brian SgambatiBy Lauren Yarger
It’s every parent’s nightmare, only Colby and Nick never get to wake up in Rachel Axler’s dark comedic drama Smudge playing Off-Broadway the Women’s Project.
Cassandra, the healthy baby girl they had dreamed of during Colby’s pregnancy, turns out to be an “undetected anomaly,” a deformed jelly-fish-like stump of a being with no arms, one eye and a spike at her tail. Colby (Cassie Beck) is repulsed by her child and by the fact that she can’t love it. Nick (Greg Keller) is in denial, hovering over the carriage urging his “beautiful” daughter to play “catch” with a strange stuffed carrot toy (that might look a lot like the child) and demanding that Colby bond with the baby while he happily goes off to do work on the census with his older brother Pete (Brian Sgambati).
Pam MacKinnon expertly directs, physically placing Colby far away from the creature in the carriage hooked up to life support through a series of surging, beeping, glowing tubes and using a minimalist set (Narelle Sissons) of two chairs and a bunch of filing boxes stacked up all around the stage topped by a glass ceiling, that might just be a metaphor as well as a scene topper. The space doubles as the couple’s home and the brothers’ office, each with Cassandra’s carriage ever-present.
Try as she might to neatly “file” her life, Colby can’t find a folder that adequately labels Cassandra. She turns to dark humor (and a lot of cheese cake) while trying to get close to what she thought was just a ‘smudge” on a sonogram while being pushed further away by Nick’s who leaves their marriage bed.
Beck is chilling as the mother vindictively cutting the sleeves off of the baby’s sleepers while nonchalantly explaining to her husband, “It doesn’t have limbs, it doesn’t need sleeves.”
We feel her despair as she threatens to slice the baby’s tubes just to see if she can provoke a response from it. It’s compelling and hits every raw nerve.
Colby eventually replaces the hated carrot with “Mr. Limbs,” a ball-like creature she crafts out of stuffing and sewing together the dismembered sleeper sleeves and legs. Cassandra appears to respond to it and Colby starts to bond. Nick, however, takes on more work and refuses to return calls from his frantic mother who wants a picture of the baby. Pete finally visits the house to snap a photo for her, but retreats when he sees Cassandra.
Pete’s character is awkward, as he is an outlet for most of the play’s humor. Axler won an Emmy for her writing on the “Jon Stewart Show” and now writes for “Parks and Recreation,” so she knows how to write a joke. There’s just something uncomfortable about laughing in the midst of what’s taking place in these people’s lives.
The most intriguing question Axler raises, however, is not about whether the couple will be able to cope. It is more about who exactly is the monster here? It sure isn’t the innocent child beeping and gurgling on life support. Is it the mother who calls her daughter a “freaking hot dog,” the father who tries to measure public opinion about killing the baby by adding specific, masked questions to a census survey or the brother who is so self-absorbed that he doesn’t care about the tragedy that’s just taken place in his brother’s family?
Cassie Beck and Greg Keller
Before you judge too quickly, there’s another candidate for the title of monster – you – and me. I think Colby’s jiggling of the Mr. Limbs toy at the carriage is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I wanted to laugh out loud, but stifled it, because if I think that’s funny, just what kind of monster does that make me? Axler understands. The play was inspired by “the most horrible thought” she ever had after she saw someone like Cassandra.
If you’re too realistic, this play might keep you from pondering the larger questions while you spend time thinking about things like, would the doctors really not be able to tell something was wrong during the pregnancy? Would the grandmother not get on a plane when she can’t raise Nick on the phone? Would Pete and/or his wife not visit sooner or more often? Doesn’t Colby have any friends or relatives?
Suspending reality on those things gives Axler the ability to put these characters in isolation so she can examine their deepest thoughts. Rewriting the play to address them would be possible of course, but the result as it stands is worth cutting some slack. The subject matter is difficult and off-putting, but it really makes you think. The characters, even the never-seen baby, are well defined and you can relate to at least one of them. That kind of drama is what makes good theater.
Smudge plays through Feb. 7 at the Julia Miles Theatre, 424 W. 55th St., NYC. Tickets are available by calling 212-757-3900
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I was lucky enough, with Lauren, to see the workshop of this show at the 2008 Eugene O'Neill Festival. (We also got to know the playwright, who's a really lovely person.) It's an incredibly uncomfortable show, and one that will poke at the deepest fears of anyone who has even considered having children. Lauren, if you think it would be appropriate, I'd be interested to hear about how it might have changed since the workshop 18 months ago.
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