Custom Made Theatre Making Sense of Albee’s Controversial Play

By Emma Krasov

Edward Albee’s 1996 “The Play About the Baby”operates with some timeless references everyone can relate to – a young love, a stolen baby – and with others, not evoking too much empathy, like gypsies stealing their victims’ life savings and babies, or a Watteau-style painter hanging himself upon a break-up with his lover/model. Maybe it’s because the latter references reek of urban legends dated, like, a century ago? The stuff you don’t even hear in the news… like, ever.

But, of course, after “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards the author can pull off anything, including the absurdist mish-mash suspended over time, place, or social identifiers.   

To the honor of Custom Made Theatre, the play, directed by Brian Katz and performed by a small but multi-talented ensemble, is a total attention-grabber which leaves audiences satisfactory discontent with the plot development and eager to discuss, argue, take sides, and make points, which is always a good indication of a theatre production well done and properly delivered.

Richard Aiello (Man) makes his character exceedingly believable despite the total lack of written background this character presumably comes from. We see and listen to the man – well-educated, sarcastic, manipulative, and thoroughly engaging, who masters total command of both the other characters and the audience. Since the show is happening on the intimate tiny stage of the Gough Street Playhouse located in a church basement, the immediacy of the happening is palpable.  

Anya Kazimierski (Girl) delivers a very realistic performance of a wonderfully uncharacteristic young wife and mother whose only role in the play or in her life is to be a young wife and mother, sometimes mixing up the two sides of her role to the author’s specifications.

Linda Ayres-Frederick (Woman) might look like overdoing it at times, but come to think of it her role is written with so many inexplicable details – character traits, life circumstances, and means of expressing those – that any far-fetched and not too exciting stretches might be just what this role requires.   

Shane Rhoades (Boy) could have benefited from better enunciation (or, rather, the audience would have benefited from it) but otherwise he is very much fit for the role of a young husband enormously enamored and engaged with his wife and “hard all the time” to put it in author’s own words chosen for this character.  

Speaking of fit, the full frontal nudity scenes involving Boy’s and Girl’s foreplay and lovemaking are so perfectly inoffensive – almost sterile, which is a good thing – especially on a small stage! If you as an audience member are subjected to the onstage nudity it better be performed by such fit and smooth bodies as belong to the abovementioned young actors.

Very appropriate costumes and props for the play were created by Maxx Kurzunski, scenic design by Sarah Phykitt, lighting design by Dena Burd, original composition by Liz Ryder, fight choreography by Jon Bailey. Stage manager Colin Johnson.   

The Theatre issues Nudity and Language Alert for The Play About the Baby which is intended for adult audiences. The show runs through October 14. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 7:00 p.m. at the Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough Street in San Francisco.

Additional information at: www.custommade.org/the-baby.