Baby with the Bathwater

Baby with the Bathwater

"Baby with the Bathwater" is a play by Christopher Durang about a boy named Daisy, his influences, and his eventual outcome.

Act I

Two parents who are completely unprepared for parenthood bring home their newborn baby. The two cannot seem to name the baby. John thinks the baby is a boy, but Helen says the doctors said they could decide later. When the baby cries, the two cannot quite decide what to do. To their rescue comes Nanny – who enters their apartment as if by magic, and is full of abrupt shifts of mood, first cooing at the baby soothingly, then screaming at it. In subsequent scenes, John and Nanny have an affair, Helen takes baby and leaves, only to come back a moment later rain-soaked and unhappy. ("Well if it isn’t Nora five minutes after the end of "A Doll's House", says Nanny.)

Act II

By the time the baby is a toddler, Daisy has finally been named. At this age Daisy has a penchant for running in front of buses and for lying, depressed, in piles of laundry. The audience hears an alarming essay Daisy has written in school, and the principal, the terrifying Miss Willoughby, is oblivious to the essay’s cry for help, and instead gleefully awards it an "A" for style. Years later, Daisy enters dressed as a girl, but obviously a young man. The audience follows his years of therapy, where he alternates between feelings depression and anger, and is unable to complete his freshman essay on "Gulliver’s Travels" despite having been in college for five years. In a scene reminiscent of the beginning of the play, Daisy (who has since chosen a new name) and his young bride fondly regard their own baby, determined not to repeat their parents' calamitous mistakes.

Reviews

'Mr. Durang is one of our theater’s brightest hopes – he knows how to write funny plays, which makes him a rarity. In "Baby with the Bathwater", he manages to combine all three modes farce, satire, good-humored wackiness … Durang keeps laughter bubbling... We laugh and gasp at the same time.' Sylviane Gold, Wall Street Journal

'Christopher Durang is one of the funniest dramatists alive, and one of the most sharply satiric. This time, parenthood is the target. Keith Reddin, as the former Daisy, is the perfect Durang leading man, puzzled and gravely polite, until he finally asserts himself.' Edith Oliver, The New Yorker

'Nanny – a warped Mary Poppins as played by Dana Ivey – believes that cuddling children only spoils them. She gives the baby a rattle made of asbestos, lead and Red Dye No. 2. … Daisy proves a fuller creation than the outrageous facts suggest. Watching the character undergo therapy, we feel the pain that leads him to have more than 1,700 sexual partners, that makes it impossible for him to find an identity or a name. A playwright who shares Swift’s bleak view of humanity, [Durang] conquers bitterness and finds a way to turn rage into comedy that is redemptive as well as funny.' Frank Rich, New York Times

Production history

* premiere, March 31, 1983 by American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, directed by Mark Linn-Baker
* off-Broadway, November 9, 1983 by Playwrights Horizons in New York City, directed by Jerry Zaks
* off-off-Broadway, June 15, 2002 by Rising Sun Performance Company in New York City, directed by Jason Tyne


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • throw out the baby with the bathwater — informal : to get rid of something you want while trying to get rid of something you do not want If you ignore her message because you don t like the way she presents it, you will be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. • • • Main Entry:… …   Useful english dictionary

  • baby with the bathwater, throw out the —  Be over zealous, esp. in reform or change, so that the valuable is disposed of as well as the less valuable …   A concise dictionary of English slang

  • don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater — The proverb is often used allusively, especially in the metaphorical phrase to throw (or empty) out the baby with the bathwater. Known in German from at least as early as the start of the sixteenth century; Cf. 1610 J. KEPLER Tertius Interveniens …   Proverbs new dictionary

  • Throw out the baby with the bath water — is an idiomatic expression used to suggest an avoidable error in which something good is eliminated when trying to get rid of something bad,[1] or in other words, rejecting the essential along with the inessential.[2] A slightly different… …   Wikipedia

  • throw out the baby with the bathwater — phrasal to discard or lose something useful or beneficial in the process of discarding or rejecting something unwanted …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • throw the baby out with the bathwater — To get rid of the essential along with the superfluous • • • Main Entry: ↑baby * * * throw the baby out with the bathwater phrase to get rid of the good and useful aspects of something without intending to, while you try to get rid of its… …   Useful english dictionary

  • throw\ the\ baby\ out\ with\ the\ bathwater — • throw the baby out with the bath • throw the baby out with the bathwater v. phr. To reject all of something because part is faulty. God knows that there are weaknesses in the program, but if they act too hastily they may cause the baby to be… …   Словарь американских идиом

  • throw the baby out with the bathwater — ► throw the baby out with the bathwater discard something valuable along with things that are undesirable. Main Entry: ↑baby …   English terms dictionary

  • throw the baby out with the bathwater — verb To discard something valuable, often inadvertently, in the process of removing waste. They cancelled the entire project because the new management didnt like the prototype, but I think they threw the baby out with the bathwater …   Wiktionary

  • throw the baby out with the bathwater — reject all of something because part of it is faulty When they decided to get rid of all of the computers because one was broken it was like throwing the baby out with the bath water. They only needed one new computer …   Idioms and examples

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