Taking Care of Baby – Location, Tickets, Reviews
Taking Care of Baby, an American premiere play at City Center presented by Manhattan Theatre Club, is based on real events. It’s the story of Donna MacAuliffe, a young woman convicted of murdering her two infant children and later acquitted after she is diagnosed with a rare mental disorder. Playwright Dennis Kelly uses word-for-word interviews with Donna, her husband, her politician mother, an investigative reporter, and the diagnosing doctor to weave a genuine tale of horror, regret, and cold, ugly truth.
Unless, of course, Dennis Kelly and his characters are lying to us.
Without giving too much a way, Taking Care of Baby makes you think about what we really seek when we seek the truth. It’s a heartbreaking story. Kelly’s writing is nimble and smart and only occasionally slips into forced melodrama (as a few critics note). The ensemble cast, featuring the great Reed Birney, is uniformly excellent. Taking Care of Baby is tightly crafted and entertaining, yes, but it’s also an unsettling treatise on lies, whether told for the sake of politics, career ambition, love, sanity, or, perhaps, drama.
Recommended if…
You enjoy existential conversations on the nature of truth;
You enjoy sophisticated crime stories;
You like your trust in the illusion of theater to be lovingly tested; and
You don’t mind stories with a solid emotional gut-punch.
LOCATION
The Studio at Stage II – New York City Center
131 W 55th Street
New York City
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RUNNING TIME
2 hours and 10 minutes, 1 intermission
TICKETS
$30.00 (click here for tickets)
DATES
Performances through December 8, 2013
REVIEWS
New York Times
A Story to Question, Word for Word
Entertainment Weekly
The play is a supremely cheeky bit of theatrical leg-pulling.
Time Out New York
Director Erica Schmidt steers a strong cast through the material, whose veneer of interview-transcript realism is a front for barbed and insinuating satire.
TheaterMania
Tony-winning Matilda librettist Dennis Kelly stands alone as playwright of the intimate Manhattan Theatre Club production — and you don’t miss the music one bit.
Village Voice
‘Taking Care of Baby’s Vivid Ensemble Acting Makes Up for the Tendentiousness
CAST & CREW
(partial list)
By Dennis Kelly
Directed by Erica Schmidt
Featuring Francois Battiste, Reed Birney, Kristen Bush, Amelia Campbell, Margaret Colin, Michael Crane, Ethan Phillips ad Zach Shaffer