Oh Baby, Am I Ready for This?

The New York City stage deals with relationships, struggles, sickness, and grief all the time. Of course, parenthood is not excluded from the mix. Two current theater productions delve into just this topic.

Manhattan Theatre Club's Cradle and All at the NY City Center explores the impact of having children on two couples (neighbors) in a Brooklyn Heights building. One couple reexamines whether to have a child, while another couple examines how their marriage will survive after having a child. Either way, both relationships will never be the same again in this well-done piece.  

Jonathan Marc Sherman's Knickerbocker at the Public Theatre is a series of conversations between an expectant father and his wife, friends, and father in the "womb" of a booth at the Knickerbocker restaurant in Union Square. I have never met anyone  - mother, father, couple - who was completely ready for parenthood. However, I left the Public Lab performance unsure and really not caring whether the meandering neurotic Jerry played by Alexander Chaplin was up for the task of fatherhood.

While we are on the topic of parenthood in the theater, I must menthon Rachel Axler's skillful Smudge, which played last year at the Women's Project, about a couple coping with the birth of a baby girl who is severely deformed. All parents wish for a healthy boy or girl. But what happens when a parent's worst fears are realized?