Sitcom Schizophrenia Seizes HRDC

Some people have imaginary friends they cherish during childhood. Others develop full-blown, separate personas which they cultivate right up to the moment they kill their creations. Taking a literal spin on the idea of an "inner child," the Unseen Theatre production of "And Baby Makes Seven" offered a solid, but unremarkable, portrayal of colliding fantasies and realities. Unfortunately, because of a tendency toward pat set-ups reminiscent of an odd sit-com pilot and a vague sense of lagging toward the end, the audience was left thinking about the mental exercise of story-telling rather than caring about the actors' evocation of the topic.

Drawing upon that ever-vexing subject--imaginary kids--"And Baby Makes Seven" involves a thoroughly 90's grab-bag family arrangement. With the indispensable help of friend Peter (Christopher J. Arruda), Anna (Heather Sullivan) and Ruth (Christine Blake) have moved towards having a real child, and Ruth is therefore very pregnant. But the young women have already been nurturing three children whose personalities they assume now and then: the legendary French wild child, raised by wolves; an endearing little child prodigy; and the character who floats up, up, and away in the children's lit classic, "Le Ballon Rouge." The problem? Peter tires of this imaginary-children nonsense. The solution? Well, that can be the thorny bit, as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" aficionados know.

With so clear a set-up, and with so many reminders of just how quirky a presence three imaginary children can be, an immense burden is placed on the actors to steer the situation away from curiosity status and towards something broader in scope than the craziness of new visions in dysfunctional families.

For much of the play, things run smoothly, as the audience absorbs any information it can in order to figure out this rearranged murder mystery: a birth mystery, asking why Ruth and Anna needed to create such fantasies. The childlike wonder of their imagination when faced with Peter's good-natured, yet impatient incredulity produces numerous opportunities for a comedy that tantalizes us with the perversity of supposedly responsible adults' having such fantasies.

This forbidden tinge is played up through scenes in the dark, such as the opening, which uses the instantly recognizable, timeless set-up of two kids (Ruth and Anna) with a flash-light trading words in bed. Arruda's Peter, so very often positioned near the door and the outside world beyond it, provides a contrasting authority figure.

Arruda achieves just the right lilt in his voice and mild bulging of eyes that indicate how, hey, he's just beginning to think the whole thing a little bit strange. In a way, he takes the side of the audience, and sometimes it seems he is smiling, detached, at the whole goings-on. He's just a sensitive fellow in a band collar, after all.

Blake, as Ruth, provides a similar stabilizing presence, tacitly brandishing her baby-on-board girth. Yet hers is a false stability, as she keeps alive the children fantasies, dutifully breaking up scuffles between the Wild Child and Le Ballon Rouge, even as they occur in one person. Blake hits the note of maternal cajoling perfectly.

Problems start to arise, however, with the boisterousness of the kid personas: they tend to take center stage. Sullivan plays Anna's two kid personas to great comic effect: now an outrageous Chevalierian accent, now a tiny, tiny child's voice. One scene involving a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich reaches epic proportions, and one fears for the moment that Sullivan will explode onstage. Her Anna seems understandable impatient at times to return to the other personas: they're more fun.

The basic premise, in other words, is presented solidly, almost too solidly. Gradually, the antics get somewhat tiresome, and, when the process of exorcising the three imaginary children gets underway, the audience becomes impatient for it to finish.

Ultimately, since the children alone do not provide enough compelling material, we look to the adults, but they remain stuck in a formula of hemming and hawing over the kids, whether for or against their existence. A late outburst by Ruth about her friends' disrespect of her seems almost an afterthought, and the wrap-up scene, new baby included and old babies rejuvenated, is played with such a smooth resolution, such a return to levity, that we feel vaguely cheated.

"And Baby Makes Seven" made excellent use of the formidable Kronauer Space and all its little challenges (where did all that brick come from?), evoking an apartment surprisingly well.

While it's an interesting foray into the subject of family fantasies, "And Baby Makes Seven," does not quite delve deep enough in evoking the "real" characters' interaction with one another. The imagined children take up a little more space than even the play seems to intend with its experimenting with the idea of concocted narratives. By turns amusing and perplexing, the production dutifully brought things to a crescendo, but missing a few interesting bits along the way.