Little Parts Hunts a Baby-Daddy
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Echo Theater Company
Thru April 10
Recommended
There are times when one’s not quite sure what a theater piece is about, but its presentation is so engaging that it doesn’t matter. Case in point: writer-performer Ann Noble’s solo work, in which the title character (Little Parts) is a pregnant clown conducting an internet search for a Baby-Daddy for her “maybe baby.”
Shabbily garbed, with close-cropped hair, a red nose and a multicolored bow perched on her head, “Little Parts” is not an assured person — although, like so many insecure people, she pretends to be. We gather from her occasional scoffing remarks that she resents her father, who disapproves of her job as a clown and is critical of her lifestyle. She’s also disturbed by a bartender at a club she frequents because he gives her the “stink eye.” And a nameless person referred to only as she turns out to be a stage director who has denied her a lead role in a theatrical production and instead assigned her a minor one, a rejection Little Parts has apparently taken much to heart (hence her name).
The maybe-baby is a maybe because she — Little Parts is firm on the prospective gender — has no exact due date, and no conception date either. Many people have applied to be the Baby-Daddy via Google doc applications, answering all the questions and even elaborating upon them. Now, after eliminating applicants that are too smart (they have graduate degrees), too boastful or too macho, Little Parts has narrowed the field to six.
These aspirants manifest physically in odd ways. For example, hayseed “Chuck” is a broom wearing sunglasses, Lawyerlike Quinton is a sock puppet in a turtleneck. Multilingual Louie is a small classroom globe in a beret. And so on. Since these “gentlemen,” as she refers to them, are unable to independently respond to her questions, Little Parts answers for them.
Created in part in a workshop at the Berg studios, Noble’s script hasn’t yet coalesced into a fully developed narrative. Father, mother, bartender and director are vaguely referenced, so the precise events which have led Little Parts to her evidently troubled state remain opaque.
Instead, as performed by this accomplished performer, the piece emerges as a kind of theatrical portraiture, one character’s display of a series of private moments that, taken together, provide a glimpse into the internal struggle of a reclusive woman. While the audience’s presence is acknowledged — we are even confided in —the dialogue we’re privy to is mostly conversation that a lonely unsettled individual would be having with herself if she were alone.
At first this dialogue seems random and rambling, with the character not in focus. But the haze clears as things progress, reaching their comic apex during the interview scenes as Little Parts earnestly presses each prospect on his qualifications for parenthood, while flushing with womanly pleasure at the attention of so many “Daddies” at once, as improbably represented by a lamp, a pinwheel toy and a plant.
No director is credited, and the production values are spare, albeit colorful. The production shares a backdrop of indeterminate nature with a concurrent production. Props, like a laptop made from what looks like a take-out pizza box and labelled laptop in big letters, add quirky humor. And the distant strains of Tom Waits in the background bring a touch of pathos.
Little Parts Hunts a Baby-Daddy is part of the Alone Together solo performance series presented by Echo Theater Company at the Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater; Tues., 8 pm; thru April 10. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission. https://www.echotheatercompany.com/
