Taking Care of Baby
Opening Night: November 19, 2013
Closing: December 8, 2013
Theater: MTC
Taking Care of Baby is a documentary-style drama centering on Donna McAuliffe, a young mother convicted of the murder of her two infant children. In a series of probing interviews, the people in the story, including Donna and her bewildered mother, Lynn, reveal how they may have harmed those they sought to protect.
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November 19, 2013
Oscar Wilde’s warning that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple” should be affixed to all documentaries, whatever their form or content. Most television watchers are, by now, savvy enough to understand that there ain’t much reality in reality shows. But what about journalistic exposés à la Michael Moore, or family anatomies à la “Capturing the Friedmans” or particularly biographical studies of various eminences that allow the subjects to speak for themselves? Life and time teach us that no narrators are reliable, especially regarding the stories of their own lives.
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November 19, 2013
To New York audiences, Dennis Kelly is the wildly imaginative Tony Award-winning librettist whose fantastical tales of circus performers and escapologists fill the Shubert Theatre nightly in Broadway’s British import Matilda the Musical. On the heels of this auspicious entrance into the New York theater scene, audiences now have the privilege of experiencing Kelly’s work in its far more modest, natural habitat. His 2007 play Taking Care of Baby, which debuted at the Hampstead Theatre in London, is now playing at New York City Center – Stage II — the smallest of Manhattan Theatre Club’s off-Broadway venues.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 19, 2013
”The following has been taken word for word from interviews and correspondence. Nothing has been added and everything is in the subjects own words, though some editing has taken place. Names have not been changed.” This passage opens Dennis Kelly’s ripped-from-the headlines 2007 play Taking Care of Baby (playing at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off Broadway Stage II through Dec. 8) — but don’t let these phrases fool you. The play is a supremely cheeky bit of theatrical leg-pulling.
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November 19, 2013
Dennis Kelly pulls off quite a feat in his smart, punchy Taking Care of Baby. The action revolves around Donna (Kristen Bush), a mentally unstable young mother accused of murdering, on separate occasions, her two children. We don’t ever learn if Donna is guilty, but the true marvel is that we don’t actually care. Using a pseudo-documentary approach, Kelly instead keenly dissects the ethical corruption of various systems around her: political, medical and journalistic.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 19, 2013
“The following has been taken word for word from interviews and correspondence,” says an offstage voice just after the actors have taken their chairs, spread across a bare, neutral-toned stage. “Nothing has been added, and everything is in the subjects’ own words, though some editing has taken place. Names have not been changed.” It’s the start of the excellent and engrossing Taking Care of Baby, which opened last night in the Manhattan Theatre Club’s smaller off-Broadway space at New York City Center, and the house lights aren’t even down yet. You’re ready for an Exonerated-style examination of justice deferred.
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