Review of Cry It Out, New Haven Theater Company
A play that looks at the expectations that drive and surround motherhood, Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry It Out is funny and touching, and thought-provoking. The story focuses on two new mothers inhabiting different social levels but sharing a joyful preoccupation with their newfound roles. Both are on maternity leave from work, but Lina (Deena Nicol-Blifford), a cheery and earthy medical worker, already knows when her time will be up. Jessie (Jenny Schuck), a lawyer who may be up for partnership, is wrestling with her desire to remain a fulltime mom and not return to the workforce, despite the plans of her husband, Nate (never seen).
The play’s action takes place in the adjacent backyards of the women’s homes where the duo relax during nap times with coffee and confidences. We learn a lot about how these women see themselves and the issues and joys of parenthood, and their rapport is heartening and entertaining. Lina, while she can take potshots aplenty at the tastes and assumptions of her friend (“Whole Foods? The nightmare is complete.”), seeks mainly to put Jessie at ease and to find and be a genuine friend. Her life is fraught with a mother and a stepmother who each in her way is a trial, and she knows that without her continued income the family will sink. Jessie, who has more options in life, has to wrestle with Nate’s longing for a home in Montauk next to his well-heeled parents, and her own traumatic memories of a birth that nearly didn’t happen.
Into this inviting give-and-take intrudes Mitchell (Ruben Ortiz), an awkward visitor from the much fancier neighborhood on the hill that overlooks the backyard (literally overlooks, as Mitchell has a telescope for watching the cozy coffee klatch). His reason? He is worried about his wife Adrienne and, in his view, her problems with new motherhood. His solution? To get her to mix with these fiercely fun moms and learn the ropes.
Lina (Deena Nicol-Blifford), Jessie (Jenny Schuck), Adrienne (Melissa Anderson) in New Haven Theater Company’s production of Cry It Out
Jessie’s OK to that plan is the first rift between the friends, though Lina tries to put a good face on it (while not for a minute swallowing her ill will or disbelief). Nicol-Blifford’s Lina can be depended on to indicate all her feelings and to laugh off, mostly, what can’t be helped. She’s a hearty, engaging character that could have been written for this actress, so naturally does Nicol-Blifford seem to grasp her mannerisms and speech rhythms. Shuck’s Jessie is more tightly wound and careworn. She seems to get through life by not expressing her real feelings and so her ability to voice profanity with Lina is the kind of license to be herself that she’s long been seeking. But it’s a given that Adrienne will be more like her than like Lina.
Adrienne (Melissa Anderson), it turns out, isn’t much like either. She has no problem expressing her utter disdain, asserting her professional status—as a jewelry designer soon to be carried by Barney’s—and denying any maternal anxiety such as her husband fears; in any case, unlike the other two, she has a support staff to help her. In fact, the other two women have already met Adrienne’s daughter’s nanny and the little girl herself, a telling indication of the social norms of child-raising in this zip code.
As played with a coiled bitterness by Anderson, Adrienne is a welcome riposte to the easy assumptions about home and husbands shared by the other two. Because we meet Mitchell without seeing the spouses of the other two women, we are privy (as are they) to the “he said/she said” nature of relations between Mitchell and Adrienne. And when Adrienne turns up again, she has a read on the situation that completely offsets Mitchell’s as well as Jessie’s diagnosis. That’s when the glass houses nature of these relations becomes fraught for all, and for us as we look on at the privacy of parenting made public.
As usual, NHTC, in this lively production directed by Marty Tucker (in his directing debut with the troupe), plays to its strengths. A single set, two main characters and two ancillary characters—all fully inhabited and easy to confuse with the actors themselves, the performances feel so natural—and a swift run-time of 90 minutes with no intermission.
There are many blackouts for quick changes, during which some kind of kid-friendly sing-song plays, the sort of thing I would mock incessantly to my own daughter, but that’s just me. My only cavil about the production is that Mitchell seems to collapse in tears before a stranger a bit too readily for the type he seems to be. But his renovation in the last scene is handled very capably by Ortiz, so much so that we might expect to see Cry It Out 2: Daddy’s Home, where working moms leave the little ones in the newly aware care of stay-at-home dads.
Comic and thoughtful and closely observed, NHTC’s Cry It Out cries out to be seen. Two additional shows have been added to the initial run.
Cry It Out
By Molly Smith Metzler
Directed by Marty Tucker
Cast: Melissa Anderson, Deena Nicol-Blifford, Ruben Ortiz, Jenny Schuck
New Haven Theater Company
February 22, 23, 24, 29; March 1, 2, 8, 9, 2024