Susan Blackwell, Christopher Sieber, and Lucas Steele.
Photo by Monique Carboni.
When a loving and fully committed gay couple decide to have a baby they simply go through the complicated process of adoption. Well, it’s not quite so simple a decision or process for Dan and Terry his partner “boyfriend” in the new musical The Kid based on Dan Savage’s 1999 book The Kid: What Happened after My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant. Savage, the real-life syndicated sex columnist (or, as he keeps reminding us during the show that his column Savage Love is really “a forum on politics and relationships”.) This is not only the principal source for the material but also a key player in this highly entertaining and unconventionally endearing musical. Plenty of bouncy, ear-friendly music by Andy Monroe, a bounty of amusing and witty lyrics by Jack Lechner and a cleverly constructed book by Michael Zam affectionately support Dan’s and Terry’s emotional roller coaster ride into parenthood.
The Kid, the winner of the 2009 BMI Foundation Jerry Bock Award for Excellence in Musical Theater, has joyously found its way to Off Broadway thanks to The New Group. As directed with an invigorating gusto by Scott Elliott that compliments the deft and sometimes daffy musical staging by Josh Prince, The Kid shoulders its prescribed controversies not only with pride but also with a pertinently uplifting consideration of what impending parenthood is like. Christopher Sieber is plain and simply endearing as Savage, a gay man ready to step up to the plate as a responsible nurturing parent.
Coming at us soon after his hilarious Tony-nominated performance in the musical Shrek, Sieber serves as both the play’s narrator/asides giver and as the impassioned but often exasperated partner of the more volatile Terry (Lucas Steele.) Not only is the model-slim and fashionably blonde Steele a pleasing contrast to the more strapping Sieber, but he also allows Terry’s ingrained vanity to keep peeking through his ever awakening mothering instincts (“When They Put Him in Your Arms.”) It was an especially nice touch to have Dan’s mother, as sweetly played Jill Eikenberry, be an irresistibly empathetic if also too brief, presence in the show.
What is notable about The Kid is how it gets right to the heart of the matter: that is coping and dealing with the anxieties and issues that are raised with an adoption, especially as it affects a nervous, highly strung gay couple under scrutiny (“They Hate Us.”) In this case it is an open adoption as opposed to a closed adoption. With the former, the birth mother knows and approves of the proposed parents and is allowed visitation rights. The musical may consider the obstacles that Dan and Terry face somewhat lightheartedly, but it also is defined by a pronounced sensitivity. The obstacles not only include the initial adoption application, associated red-tape, the subsequent home visit by a professional case worker, but culminating with the testy and tentative meetings with Melissa (Jeanine Frumess) the homeless birth mother. There is no sentimentality affixed to Frumess’s performance, but there is in her affecting scenes the cold reality and heartbreak of the situation.
The collaborators have placed a happy and congenial mixture of comically contrived sexuality within a realistically considered relationship. The songs, particularly the exceedingly funny “Gore Vidal,” that reveals the initial attraction between Dan and Terry and the genuinely moving “My Kid,” as sung by Dan, are part of a melodically inclined score than affords us as many moments to smile as it does to feel sincerely supportive of these parents to be.
There is terrific support from Ann Harada, as the educational director of the adoption agency, Susan Blackwell, as the humorless case worker, and the rest of the cast who double up in roles. Derek McLane’s simple yet effective set design imaginatively embraces the cutesy animation by Jeff Scher and impressive video design by Jeff Mahshie. The Kid may not answer all the questions regarding the issues of gay adoption, but it does try, and that is all loving parents can do.
The Kid (through May 29)
The New Group @ Theatre Row (The Acorn Theater), 410 West 42nd Street
For tickets ($61.25) call (212) 279 - 4200