e-baby

e-baby, Ensemble Theatre, 19 October-17 November 2016. Photography by Clare Hawley: above – Danielle Carter and Gabrielle Scawthorn; below – Gabrielle Scawthorn 

Director and dramaturg of this new play by Jane Cafarella is Nadia Tass, the theatre and movie luminary whose stage work is rarely seen in Sydney because, of course, she’s Melbourne-based [insert your choice of glum emoji here]. How interesting then to have it mounted at the Ensemble where it can be savoured up close and also be given a first-rate production.

e-baby is about surrogacy: one woman’s womb being rented out to carry another woman’s baby to term. In this instance the set-up is signalled swiftly with Catherine (Danielle Carter) sporting a lawyerly briefcase and saying lawyerly things as she flies in to New York from London to interview candidates for the sacred task. 

We meet just one applicant, the carefree, working class Nellie (Gabrielle Scawthorn) from Connecticut. She wears a crucifix around her neck and has already popped out two kids much as she might spit melon pips. She is keen on the $30,000-plus expenses fee but also likes the idea of helping the frantically childless 46-year-old achieve her life’s wish. She is a neat stereotype as is Catherine, a fairly charmless creature, and much of what feels like the first 15-20 minutes is spent establishing that. 

Catherine is a shiny sculpted, coiffed and entitled Barbie-cougar whose lack of respect or empathy for Nellie bubbles under and often surfaces. The two convey words back and forth via Skype and phone. To say they communicate is stretching it. Nellie munches sugary cereal from the packet while Catherine earnestly lectures her on healthy diet and how to be pregnant. Their worlds and experiences could not be further apart. 

Largely through Gabrielle Scawthorn’s vivid, vanity-free and characteristically intelligent performance, the humour scattered about the first half is well to the fore. It means that the transition to a more serious and potentially tragic second half (it’s about 90 minutes straight through) is effectively achieved. 

Danielle Carter has a rougher time with the two-dimensional ex-pat Australian Catherine. “I prefer citizen of the world to ex-pat” she is required to tell a bemused Nellie. Even Meryl Streep couldn’t make a line like that sound authentic. 

The blurb suggests we’ll get to think about the ultimate tussle: who does this baby really belong to? But it’s one of the many questions about surrogacy that isn’t addressed in favour of a sort of pregnant version of The Odd Couple or much younger and differently gendered Grumpy Old Men. 

These would not be bad alternatives if it were a spiky, scratchy oddball dram-edy – especially as their sparring is mainly via phone and computer screens (ingeniously enlarged above the rather cool, abstract setting – by Tobhiyah Stone Feller with lighting by Nicholas Higgins).

For me the questions that would have been interesting to see addressed are – why does Catherine have such a sense of entitlement? And such an obsession with reproducing herself? Is it because she’s wealthy, successful and bleeds privilege if she cuts herself? Is it simply a 1st World thing? What are the moral and ethical issues at stake? 

Catherine’s contract for Nellie is a corker, both legally equitable and breathtakingly heedless, but it’s skated over in a comedic scene whose focus is a beautifully bewildered Scawthorn. And then Nellie gets to play God – because of her family’s inbuilt religiosity – which adds a dash of irony and a hiccup to the plain sailing expected by Catherine. 

In the end e-baby is entertaining and well done (particularly by the gifted Gabrielle Scawthorn and her gift of the goofy Nellie). But, in the main, it tends to skirt the deeper, darker depths that ought to be present in a play of such stated ambition. This particularly at a time when abortion and women’s rights over their bodies are under serious attack yet again – but you’ll have to see e-baby to find to why this matters and where it comes in.