‘Babel’ at Theatre Exile: A collision of the goofy and the deadly serious

Jacqueline Goldfinger’s newest play at Theatre Exile arrives complete with all her signature devices: quirky characters, quippy dialogue, and the startling collision between the goofy and the deadly serious.

In Babel, the goofy is provided by a gigantic talking stork, who seems to be Big Bird’s evil cousin. The serious is the central tropic: in vitro fertilization and the wish/need to have a perfect baby.

This repetitious and generally shapeless play toggles between two couples. Renee (Anita Holland) and Dani (Amanda Schoonover) are a lesbian couple who have been trying for eight years to have a baby. Ann (Bi Jean Ngo) and Jamie (Frank Nardi Jr.) are their friends.

All are driven by the need to have “pre-certification” for their unborn babies. Such a certificate guarantees the children will have all the privileges of the society — in this futuristic world there is a water shortage among other things — and not be exiled to what are, essentially, prison camps.

If all this doomsday stuff sounds familiar, that’s because it is. A century ago, Julian Huxley was proposing a shocking advanced reproductive technology, which his brother, Aldous, then satirized in the iconic 1932 novel Brave New World.

Then the Nazis adopted these terrifying eugenics.

In Babel, Goldfinger chooses not to address these precedents, instead offering an ill-defined adolescent dread that cruises over the weighty and often heartbreaking decisions that in utero genetic testing can require.

Deborah Block, tasked with directing this superficial cruising, provides little to alleviate the tedium. The scenes seem to come straight out of a TV sitcom, while the eccentricities — the talking stork — are explained. As it turns out, Nardi’s stork is “an in-mind avatar” ( to the actor’s credit, he delivers this faux jargon with a straight face) who “colonizes women’s minds” by appearing in their dreams and telling bad jokes.

Schoonover’s performance is the standout in the production. She inhabits an understandable character and gives us a glimpse of what happens when the one seemingly rational person discovers she cannot control everything, and snaps.

Goldfinger has explained in interviews that the play’s title alludes to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, where humans try to reach toward God and fail.

As one character says, “Maybe if God had done a better job, we wouldn’t have to keep playing Him.” This is a cutesy write-off of the magnificent parable in Genesis, and misses the tragic point.

Babel

Through March 8 at Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th St.

Tickets: $25-$40.

Information: 215-218-4022 or theatreexile.org