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There comes a time in life when it’s all about the poop.
Not the metaphorical poop describing the state of the world or preceded by “bull,” – again describing much of what’s being said about the state of the world.
We’re talking about actual poop – the poop in diapers, and the stuff of friendship.
Two plays in Philadelphia theaters center on that “precious” time when adults with young children, dog-tired and frantic, form in-the-trenches friendships that sometimes last a lifetime and sometimes don’t.
“Summer, 1976,” from Lantern Theater Co., “is a beautiful two-hander,” said actor Grace Gonglewski. She plays one of the two women friends in the play by David Auburn, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for “Proof.”
“It’s a story about women having a friendship that’s transformational when they are young and having children, and how changes in their own lives push them apart and push them in different directions. It’s poignant,” Gonglewski said. The show runs through Oct. 11.
“Big Babies” actor Jeffrey Barg, who plays one of the parents in “Big Babies,” had a poop incident with his 3-year-old on the very morning of his Billy Penn interview.
Presented by Pier Players Theatre Co., “Big Babies” is about a few couples, longtime friends, and all of them with young kids who have their first post-baby adults-only dinner party. The play, written by Kate Brennan and David Lee White, runs through Oct. 11.
“Everybody is overtired and everybody is at their wits end. It doesn’t go very well,” Barg said. “Structurally, it’s a farce. That makes them do and act in ridiculous ways, how adults, when pushed to the edge, end up acting like big babies themselves.”
For both Gonglewski and Barg, their plays resonate deeply in their own lives.
In “Summer, 1976,” Gonglewski’s character meets a new friend through a babysitting co-op, just like Mt. Airy/Chestnut Hill Babysitting Co-op that Gonglewski joined years ago, when her child was young. (By the way, Lantern offered ticket discounts to former and current babysitting co-op members).
Gonglewski is dedicating her work in the show to her longtime friend, Martha Davis, who lived half a block away in Mount Airy. Before babies, they had a neighbors’ nodding relationship. But, shortly after Davis’ child was born, Gonglewski dropped off a chocolate-cherry loaf. The next day she found a return gift – a pesto dish and two beers, one for each of them.
“That was it,” Gonglewski marveled. “She was in for life.”
Their children were two months apart and they fed and bathed their children together nearly every day. “If she was the good cop, I was the bad cop. If I was the bad cop, she was the good cop,” she said.
Those early friendships are important, Gonglewski said. “It’s such a boring and laborious time.”
“If there is somebody who was transformational in your life, even for a short time, consider the possibility of reaching out and this goes for men,” as well, she said. “There are people in our lives who change us forever. If there’s an opportunity to be connected, take it. Life is too short.”
Davis and Gonglewski’s friendship lasted, but the fate of the friendship between Gonglewski’s character, Alice, and Diana, played by McKenna Kerrigan in “Summer, 1976” is nebulous. It’s a memory play, so the action shifts between 1976 and 2003.
The action in “Big Babies” sticks with just one evening and one dinner party.
Barg’s character, Tyler, and his wife, Janus, played by Chelsea Chandler, decide to throw a dinner party because Janus, who has a PhD, is desperate for adult conversation having spent the last year watching Dino Train (the PBS show, “Dinosaur Train,”) every single day.
She’s so desperate that, along with the menu, she even prepares a list of possible adult conversation topics: “the life and times of J.R. Oppenheimer, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, serial killers of the 1970s, serial killers of the 1980s,” Barg said.
Being a farce, “Big Babies” should incorporate the requisite slip-enabling banana peel, but Barg, as Tyler, does his best without one, tripping again and again on a loose floorboard.
Escape is what the audience will experience in this show, Barg said, “as they navigate the absurdities of parenting young children and all the things people thought they’d never say or do until they become parents.”
That morning, for example, his 3-year-old panicked momentarily when his bedroom door was stuck for all of two seconds. He ran, inconsolable, to his father. “He comes and sits in my lap, needing love, and he has a massive poop in his diaper.”
Or, the earlier time, when his other child, now 6 and well past those years, was disturbingly quiet in another room. It turned out that he had smeared poop all over the walls.
“We cleaned it up and it’s fine. He doesn’t do that anymore. He’s in first grade now,” Barg said. “In some ways, the poop is easier to clean up than paint. Before I had kids, I don’t know that I would have ever said that poop is preferable to other kinds of things that can be put on walls.
“You are at your wits end,” Barg said. “You question how much longer you can go on like this when a day feels like a week, and an hour feels like a day.”
Relationships with friends and partners help, but babyhood absurdity remains.
Yet, “you do all of this because there’s this (child) you love more than you thought you ever could love anything,” he said. “Those two things live side by side in the script just like they do in your own life.”
FYI
“Summer, 1976,” Lantern Theater Company, now through Oct. 11, St. Stephen’s Theater, 923 Ludlow St., Phila. 215-829-0395.
“Big Babies,” Pier Players Theatre Company, Through Oct. 11, Arden Theatre Company’s Hamilton Family Arts Center – Bob & Selma Studio Theatre, 62 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, 215-922-1122.
