by Tracey Paleo, Gia On The Move

“If you don’t have wounds, how can you know you’re alive?”

Strange and vast was the mind of playwright Edward Albee as referenced in The Road Theater’s current version of  The Play About The Baby directed to perfection by Andre Barron.

An illusory, complex story on the surface, the play takes the audience down a fundamental path about the deeply painful experience of loss of innocence and immaturity while awakening to suffering, pain, survival and ultimately – the greatest reward of having gone through it all – life.

It’s a giant, all encompassing theme that Albee’s play boldly and deeply addresses through bizarre comedies and intricate precisely manufactured games. Granted permission by the playwright himself to The Road Theatre, Barron moves this play down simultaneous, surreal, sinister and hilarious places.

In The Play About The Baby, we witness a young couple, set in a sort of “Garden of Eden” with only their love for one another to express and explore…until a man and a woman tell the couple that they are here to take their baby and subsequently seek to convince the boy and girl that there was no baby at all.

The couple’s journey is dark and beautiful and startling as it is absurd and even soothing, expressing utterly, the power of human existence.

The Play About The Baby is a gorgeous, dangerous experience, equally performed to excellence by the entire cast, Allison Blaize (Girl), Philip Orazio (Boy), Sam Anderson (Man) and Taylor Gilbert (Woman).

It is hands down one of The Road Theatre’s most extraordinary productions.