How hard can it be to have a baby? If the couple Expecting Isabel is any example, it's very difficult, expensive, aggravating, and l-o-n-g. Witness commercial writer Miranda and fine artist Nick, on the cusp of middle age in a world uncertain except about ways to go to pot. His spur-of-the-moment desire for a child to come out of their love turns into a years-long quest to beget one, naturally, then artificially. It merges into simply GETing a child and ends, only with maturity, in wanting to raise one.
Despite many comic episodes (the funniest involving the couple's own anything-but-role-model parents), those of many pregnancy attempts gone sour border on the tragic. Unfortunately for them (and Loomer's play), these go overboard. Try after try tend to be repetitive as well as unrealistic in regard to the resources they tap. It's clear that they often blow their finances but not convincing how they manage, even when they temporarily break up and are staying apart with parents and friend, to recover so well so soon. And in contemporary New York City!
Satire is downright blatant in such presentations as that of fertility Dr. Wilde, played benignly by Joshua Rowan yet with snake-oil-salesmanship, flanked by two nurses whose bellies keep growing. It's more fun showing Miranda's martini-downing but chic, society-matron mother (gorgeously goofy Sharon Spelman). She's just the opposite of Nick's religiously superstitious mother (Carolyn Michel, fearlessly dowdy), backed by his dad (Eb Thomas), insistent on olive oil -- not mayo -- as a sandwich spread in his house.
Various support groups end in more laughs than satisfaction of Miranda and Nick's needs. Still, they have less effect than might be expected from the efforts of so many actors, a talented costume designer, and a director deftly managing multiple scene, story, mood changes.
Articulate Kate Hampton and congenial John Pasha look and act late-30s-to-early-40s as attractive, believable leads. Guest artists, they make up for Asolo Rep's scarcity of actors their age. (Regulars have generally been with the company for a number of years, and FSU/Asolo Conservatory is a continual source of young players.) Another bit of freshness is Kris Stone's abstract white box set, a slanted-roofed room with an oval cut into the top and allowing all the abovementioned shifts. In back are a black curtain with a screen for colored sky or time-denoting projections. Like the play's length, however, scenery's a tad much -- with little discernible metaphoric connection to the plot.
Mark Barton's lighting is crucial, particularly when the action spills out to the proscenium for group scenes and direct narration to the audience. It's possible to make (too) much ado about something.
Expecting Isabel is best enjoyed if audience expectations aren't too high. Fine, if they don't let the production get in the way of the play.
