Babel comes to Florida Studio Theater as the last stop in the National New Play Network’s latest Rolling World Premiere program. FST aided the first stages of development through readings. Then the play moved on to allow author Jacqueline Goldfinger to keep or make changes, based on work of four additional creative theater teams. Her probable final script is the one FST is presenting as a dark comedy. But it’s not essentially comedic. It’s like the Biblical place of its title, where those who rule attempt to claim God’s power over it.
Goldfinger’s Babel as a place mimics the Biblical one of its title whose rulers assume being God-like creators. In this dystopian world, population is controlled through imposing laws and requiring of “certifications” based on modern eugenics. We don’t learn about what and who created the laws or politicians who back and enforce them, but we find the drama’s characters seriously under their power.
We immediately plunge into the predicaments of two couples, each going to have a baby. Should they and will they? Their world is obviously Orwellian.
At the start, we hear Renee’s heartbeat and see her doing her prenatal exercises. Her lover Dani interrupts. They’re facing—not the first time—whether or not they should seek certification to have their child. The rule is: unless a fetus can be found to have purest genetic traits, it should be aborted early. Otherwise, the baby can be put into a diminished or even slave-like social class with ever-declining behavior and treatment. Parents, of course, won’t be rewarded for trying to cope with a less-than-perfect child. (Anique Clements’s Renee is wonderfully doubtful about her parental chances, even with Rachel Moulton’s superb portrayal of staunch supporter of her lover Dani.)
The other couple in the early stages of expecting are Ann and Tom. Both couples are friends, though the traditional two seem to be better at controlling their feelings about what they should do. Ann (pretty Lucy Lavely, displaying her FSU/Asolo Conservatory training to be a confident actor) does like drinking a bit much, though. Her husband Jamie keeps reassuring her when she does express doubts. He is bent on having their child and raising it, no matter what. (Tom Patterson is not only a convincing Jamie, he’s dextrous done up in plastic feathers and bird-head with carrot nose, as he visits and warns Ann in her day-and-nightmares.)
Basically, after the exposition, there’s no true dramatic action in the play. In fact, the only consequential activity throughout consists of just conversations between each couple or between the couples together. Exception: bumblings of the mostly plastic bird. No movement of the action in stages from Aristotelian to Brechtian formulae. Only a conclusion. We don’t get any of the reality we experience in such dystopian fiction as George Orwell’s “1984” or especially Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Babel also fails to incorporate any powerful references to Hitler’s views on eugenics (even published in his book before he rose to power) that he enforced when in power.
Luckily, FST’s production is not without some strengths. Director Catherine Randazzo keeps the activity moving, even with the layout of the Bowen’s Lab stage requiring frequent blackouts for scene changes (of personnel, not scenery). Sound design helps, as does the lighting against the back wall of plain bricks. Costume design fits each character—even that bird—well. First and foremost, in an unpleasant play, the acting comes off beautifully.
