Netflix-style crime thriller brought to life on stage
Taking Care of Baby (out of 4) Written by Dennis Kelly. Directed by Birgit Schreyer Duarte. Until Feb. 14 at the Storefront Theatre, 955 Bloor St. W. TheStorefrontTheatre.com The chalkboard sign outside the Storefront Theatre reads “Live Theatre and Chill,” a spin on the Netflix catchphrase you’ve probably heard, and probably in the wrong context. But here, it’s surprisingly apt: the opener of the Storefront Theatre’s second season, a co-production by the Care Takers Collective and the Storefront Arts Initiative, is Taking Care of Babyby U.K. playwright Dennis Kelly. Written in 2007, it’s the live version of Serial and Making a Murderer years before those two phenomena ever took off.
Or is it? At first, Kelly’s Taking Care of Baby presents a verbatim account of the playwright’s interviews with those involved in the case of Donna McAuliffe (Miranda Calderon), a mother accused of killing her two infant children. It plays out like the true-crime investigative entertainment our culture now devours in single-day binge sessions.
We meet Donna, meek and spacey, who describes her experience in prison with a chilling detachment; her mother Lynn (Astrid Van Wieren), a sparkplug of a politician running for office as an independent after her party fired her because of the scandal; Martin (Dylan Trowbridge), Donna’s husband, who shows increasing antagonism toward the project and the playwright; and Dr. Millard (Richard Clarkin), a psychologist and discoverer of LKS, a syndrome that explains how a mother’s abuse of her kids stems from unnatural sensitivity to war, corruption, social inequality, injustice and environmental disasters around the world.
Dr. Millard says that the cure to LKS is to “teach people that truth is relative.” And as the play progresses, Kelly uses increasingly blunt measures to show how that is true. First off, the “verbatim” veneer dissolves. Lynn’s talent for persuasion and position of power as a politician reveals itself. A lewd journalist (Craig Lauzon) openly discusses his use of “tone” when covering Donna’s case, or in other words, his accusations hidden behind reporting.
The question of Donna’s guilt or innocence always remains the bedrock of Taking Care of Baby, but Kelly adds so many layers that it’s impossible to isolate. It all depends on the viewer’s reflection in the vot- ers Lynn visits on her first round of leafletting in her campaign: do you look at the information in front of you, or do you hold on to views that have worked for you so far?
Calderon and Clarkin give great performances as polar opposites. Donna is introverted and troubled. Dr. Millard is eloquent as the righteous pioneer of a new illness on behalf of his young female patients. But Trowbridge is a standout, as the irreparably hurt Martin and Lynn’s spin doctor and campaign manager, Jim — somehow pulling off acting as the play’s comic relief and emotional heart. Try to catch him as Martin before the show begins — staring, bewildered and angry, into the windows of the theatre from the outdoors as happy theatregoers file in to see a play on his family’s destruction.
Kelly’s script gives director Birgit Schreyer Duarte plenty to play with in a production that never seems to do its ideas justice. Michelle Tracey’s set reveals a hidden back half after intermission. It works thematically, but technically it feels haphazard, awkward and clunky. At least, it did so on opening night.
Taking Care of Baby has the potential to convince Torontonians to give up Netflix for a night to try some live theatre, if only the hardware served the story and not the other way around.