Reviewed by Carolyn Watts
What part does a contract play in the creating and carrying of a new life?
E-baby is an eloquently scripted, funny and poignant play that gets under our guard and takes us to surprising places in pursuit of an answer to this question.
Playwright Jane Caferella’s thoughtful take on surrogacy is as rewarding as it is hilarious in this 90-minute drama playing at the Ensemble Theatre .
It is quickly clear the play’s two characters are on the same journey but viewing it from completely different standpoints; the fallibilities and frailties of both women are developed sensitively.
Catherine (Danielle Carter) is 46, has undergone 18 rounds of failed IVF failures in the past 11 years and is now determined to have a surrogate carry her baby.
Nellie (Gabrielle Scawthorn) is already the mother of two young boys and it is her Christian faith that has drawn her to offer to serve as surrogate for this stranger.
Catherine is a go-getter who has worked in London, Geneva and Hong Kong. She has put work first despite her desire to raise a child.
We are tempted briefly, to judge her for not having got her priorities right; but Cafarella’s compassionate script brings out the best in us, having us see the broader human situation rather than leaping to causal judgements.
Initial differences in class, work, beliefs and age belie the commonality of both of these women for whom children are vitally important.
Where Catherine sees the situation as a contractual arrangement where all eventualities can be accounted for—including life-threatening contingencies, for Nellie their agreement is governed by a higher authority than human laws.
The laughs in this production are uproarious and original (Nellie’s friend sees the Nativity as a surrogacy agreement where Mary is carrying the child for God).
With most of the action taking place through skype, set designer Tobhiyah Stone Feller has made trans-Atlantic distances believable through cyber connections and graphics.
This play is about courage, support, and compassion as well as the unexpected challenges to integrity of such a journey.
Partly it is the elegantly spare scripting and partly the exquisitely drawn characters that bring into close focus what could otherwise be overly ‘dramatic’ and let us, instead, discover the many sides of this very modern undertaking.