Review by James Wilkinson
Cry it Out – Written by Molly Smith Metzler. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Set Design: Ilona Overweg. Costume Design: Elizabeth Rocha. Sound Design: David Reiffel. Properties Design: Kevin McGrath. Presented by Apollinaire Theatre Company at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St, Chelsea through January 19, 2020
If you stop and think about it, it’s actually a rather brutal title. We’ll be given context early on in the play by Molly Smith Metzler that’s now being produced by Apollinaire Theatre Company, which is helpful for those of us who have yet to enter the parenting game. “Cry it Out,” as in “Letting them cry it out,” refers to a method of sleep training where the parents refrain from comforting their wailing newborns so that the infants can learn to fall asleep without assistance. It’s a necessary skill for life, (I guess), but by attaching the phrase to a play about parenting, Metzler gives it much darker implications. As her characters attempt to navigate the trials and tribulations of young motherhood through a lens of class and circumstance, the title starts to feel like an unspoken sneer coming from the society around them – one that’s dripping with existential dread. “Yeah, no one’s coming to help you. Figure it out for yourselves” seems to be the lesson imparted. Grim stuff to attach to the joys of motherhood.
Relax. We’re not entering a horror show, (at least not this time). Metzler’s play is a comedy that moves in on its characters with a much more quotidian touch. When we meet them, neighbors Lina (Lily Kaufman) and Jessie (Becca A. Lewis) are both new mothers who are desperately seeking friendship. They love their children, but they’re also both new to living in the Long Island suburbs and 24-hour infant care doesn’t exactly leave them with much time for interactions with adults. Given the chance to commiserate with someone going through what they’re going through, the two form a fast bond with regular coffee dates. In interviews, Metzler has mentioned that the impetus for the play sprung out of her own experiences with motherhood and the details in the play bear that out. When Jessie describes the rage that builds within her when she finds out her husband stopped at the grocery store on his way home from work, (and thus robbing her of the chance to leave the house for an hour), I would imagine that it’s an experience that Metzler knows well. The play is full of moments like this where our lead characters find commonality in lactation issues, post-partem depression, decisions about day care and (most pressing of all) the decision about if and when they will go back to work. The few moments of plot come when it appears that Adrienne (Amie Lytle), a woman who lives in one of the nearby mansions, might join the duo for their coffee dates. Given that the plotline is one of the few larger moments in the play, I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself. Most of the play is dedicated to the smaller intimate moments between friends.
Why then does the play feel so impersonal? It confounds me. I don’t doubt that Metzler is writing from her own experiences and that it’s a topic she feels passionate about, but I don’t think that the passion bleeds through into the play. There was never any point while watching Cry it Out where I didn’t think it was passing by pleasantly enough, but I also felt like I was constantly waiting for it to break out of the box it was in. There’s a neatness to the play that I suppose allows for a certain kind of thematic consistency, but it also means that the play never colors outside of the lines. It leaves you hungry for some messiness. There’s one moment late in the play when Adrienne rushes on stage with a snap of energy that leads me to think we were finally going to get a bit of that messiness, but Metzler cuts the legs out from under the moment by ultimately using it as a chance to lecture the audience on her point. Above, I described the play’s approach to character as quotidian, but it almost doesn’t go far enough in that direction. There’s a neatness (there’s that word again) to how the show’s three mothers cleanly fall into the upper class (Adrienne), middle class (Jessie) and working class (Lina) representations. It starts to feel like you’re checking off boxes rather than representing real life.
I think that this is the kind of play where its success is going to heavily depend on the strength of the leads’ performances. Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques gives her production the best damn shot it has by casting Lily Kaufman and Becca A. Lewis. When together, the two have that kind of wonderful effervescent chemistry that seems to line up in all of the right places. In Kaufman’s performance we see hints of the bigger, broader comedy that this might have been. She leans in to her character’s thick accent, filling the room with her voice and wrestling out moments of humor hidden among her lines (case in point, a moment when her character realizes she’s drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee). Her character feels big but not cartoonish, a fine contrast to the “smaller” work that Lewis is doing. There are moments when Lewis’ Jessie seems to crawl inside of herself. There’s a tightness to the character that pops up when confronted and Lewis is able to ratchet up the internal tension. In the play’s final scene Lewis has a wonderful moment where we become aware that the character is holding back her true feelings on the matter of another’s character’s privileges (it’s a shame then, when Metzler then has Jessie say out loud exactly what was unspoken but clear in the conversation, thus indulging in a “tell don’t show” moment). When together, Kaufman and Lewis breed a warmth that makes you glad to be in their company. I think that director Jacques makes the wise choice of letting those performances come to the forefront of the production. It’s a well-designed show which may not be apparent at first because it doesn’t immediately draw attention to itself. Nevertheless, the careful choices by Ilona Overweg (set), Elizabeth Rocha (costume), Kevin McGrath (props) and David Reiffel (sound) all come together to form a nice little sandbox to play in.
I want to be clear that when I’m critical of the play’s methods, I’m not referring to the play’s content. In fact, I think that one of the virtues of Cry it Out is that it’s trying to bring issues around child care and the role of motherhood in women’s lives into a public space. But good intentions aren’t enough (at least, I don’t think so). You also have to look at how the issues are being brought into the space. A few years back I caught Metzler’s previous play Elemeno Pea when it was presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. I disliked that play in part because I thought it made assumptions about how the audience would view certain characters, which I found to be insulting. That’s another conversation for another day, but I’m happy to see that the same issue doesn’t arise here. There’s a compassion for all of the characters that I’m grateful for, even as I’m longing for a bit more messiness. For tickets and more information, visit their website: www.apollinairetheatre.com
