Charles
Isherwood

November 9, 2015

Spare a teardrop or two for the troubled gay fathers in “Dada Woof Papa Hot,” a slick, mostly enjoyable new play by Peter Parnell that opened on Monday at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Where, oh where, will they summer next year, now that Fire Island has become perhaps a little too, er, hot for young children, with the awkward questions about what all those men are doing in the underbrush? How will they find a nanny — sorry, they prefer the delicate euphemism “caregiver” — to replace the jewel they found this summer? And while the little ones have flourished in their fancy preschool, the challenge of getting into just the right kindergarten now looms. There’s something off-puttingly insular about the world of privilege, both gay and straight, depicted in Mr. Parnell’s comedy-drama about the new frontier of gay marriage and parenthood. The characters all seem to be living in a Design Within Reach catalog, among $7,000 sofas and $4,000 chandeliers. But if you grant Mr. Parnell his natural right to depict rarefied lives — this is Lincoln Center Theater, after all — his play does delve with intricacy and heart into the thorny lives of the proliferating number of gay couples with children today.