Little Footsteps: Hard Delivery
The Hideout,
through July 8
Running Time: 2 hrs, 10 min
Ever been pregnant? Had a baby? Been faced with the choice (or necessity) of becoming totally and undeniably responsible for another human being? A life-altering event, yes? No other experience can be as useful in revealing us at our best and our worst, can help us define ourselves in the light of life or the darkness of ego. Long ago I came to the conclusion that the reason homo sapiens came into being was to procreate. Simple as that. Without children, without the experience of children, without the blessing of children, we are incomplete not only as a species, but as individuals. The children of some species become independent almost at birth. Ours take years and years. Why? Because we need them as much as they need us. We are unfinished projects, until children complete us.
That’s what this inaugural Excellent Muse production of Ted Tally’s Little Footsteps at the Hideout is about. Ben and Joanie are going to have a baby. In the first act, we watch them prepare the way, converting the dining room of their New York apartment into a brightly colored nursery. But there’s a problem: Joanie wants the baby, and Ben, while he told her he did, really doesn’t. This, of course, leads to all sorts of complications, and in the second act we discover that Joanie is making a go of it on her own, with the help of her Mom. Ben … well, Ben didn’t even come to the christening.
Given the subject matter, I wish I could recommend the production. Which is not to say that there isn’t anything to recommend it; Kristi Fleming’s performance as Joanie is well worth seeing. Fleming seems to recognize the inherent power of the material, and she trusts it. She is, for the majority of the evening, so relaxed in and aware of her situation, believing she is the expectant and then the new mother is easy. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast doesn’t quite come up to Fleming’s standard. Director Robie Kentspeth has them trying too hard — often way too hard — to sell Tally’s strange combination of fourth-wall realism and direct audience address, melodrama, and broad comedy. More often than not, they mug their way through the material, rarely allowing it just to go its own way and work its own unique and special kind of magic.
The production boasts a truly wonderful set design by Paul Davis, with the partially finished, but well-planned, nursery of the first act becoming the final, but very different, article of the second. Kentspeth’s staging of the production also is effective, with each movement the actors make seeming to flow directly from the story or the characters. Lastly, there is a moment in the production that is as magical as they come: the moment when we meet the newborn baby Daniel. But in the end, the production lacks exactly this kind of magic, the kind that can only be provided by the gift of life and love and innocence and joy that a baby can bring.
This article appears in July 6 • 2001.