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The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: TNG’s Babe
By Ross
The rock music of BETTY (Off-Broadway’s BETTY Rules) drives us into this musical meeting of the minds, as legendary producer Gus, forcibly played by Arliss Howard (Public’s Killer’s Head), tries to find the whereabouts and undercurrent of a soul that may or may not reside in a possible new A&R hire. The interview is a complicated affair, with Gus’s trusted assistant, Abby, portrayed effectively by portrayed by the detailed and always expressive Marisa Tomei (“Frankie“; RTC Broadway’s The Rose Tattoo), watching on, trying hard to protect them both from each other. This is the formulation of Babe, the new play by Jessica Goldberg (Refuge; “The Path“), that fails to survive itself, as we watch the misogyny of “attractive attracts attractive” dig its own recorded grave with a few too many inappropriate tools.
Katherine, played with determination by an unconvincing Gracie McGraw (Tayler Perry’s “If Loving You Is Wrong“), is the wanna-be newbie to the industry, and she has always dreamed of finding and delivering new talent to the forefront, just like Abby did with Gus. But the times, they are a-changing, and the industry has to reform and react to the #meToo movement. But is that possible, with men like Gus, who truly believe in his spiritual musical being and his sense of knowing what ‘special’ sounds like? And is Katherine the one who can truly see it fully enough to do what is needed and required?
Marisa’s Abby bounces and shifts in the background, playing the game and feeling the rhythm of the room. She knows the score, as she has lived it and worked with it for longer than Katherine has even dreamed of being a part of this industry. The work that she has done with Gus is significant, legendary, and exciting, even with the ghostly shadows of musical success and personal engagements lingering and haunting her in the background. Her life work pleases Abby as much as it disturbs her dreams and zoned-out hallucinations. But Abby is struggling, with a cancer and a treatment that consumes her side life, what little of that exists, and she doesn’t exactly see what is approaching from within, and what kind of battle she will have to engage in to survive.
It’s a compelling conceptual mash-up, filled to overflowing with haunting visions and emotional complications that overwhelm the heart of this play’s statement. It’s clear that Gus might not still be there if he keeps up this behavior, Abby tells him, scolding him like an equal, when it’s clear Gus will never really let her become his true notated equal. He’s the spirit and the passion, he believes, even when complimenting Abby for her own abilities to see and hear. But when Gus shows Katherine his worst, it’s clear what is going to follow in regards to this alpha, but how it will be thrust upon Abby is a fine twist in a messy compilation.
Played out on a detailed set by Derek McLane (Broadway’s Purlie Victorious), with symbolic costuming by Jeff Mahshie (Broadway’s Left on Tenth), classic lighting by Cha See (Audible’s Lucy), and a finely tuned sound by Jessica Paz (Off-Broadway’s Little Shop of Horrors), Babe wrangles with a men’s club mentality that Abby has had to survive within, working the angles with all the spirit she can muster. It also, maybe unintentionally, deals with privileged youth who demand to be handed success, just because they want it. Directed haphazardly by Scott Elliott (TNG’s The Seagull/Woodstock, NY), the play, as written by Goldberg gets compromised by its own radar, swinging at too many diseases of the mind and body to formulate a statement on the systemic misogyny and brutality that exists within.
Abby must face the music in a way that surprises (us and her), but Babe, now being presented by The New Group at The Pershing Square Signature Center until December 22, 2024, might have worked a bit better without all the haunting background noise and too many light shades of privilege and addiction unexplored in the background fog. Also, if we had more care and respect for the annoying Rebel-girl Katherine, who is forced to say lines that rarely feel organic, honest, and appropriate, just to play with the uncomfortable entanglement she tries to have with Abby and with the industry she says she wants to be a part of, we might be able to get behind her indignation. She feels annoyingly privileged, even if her act of rebellion was well deserved, but it was hard to get behind her, as I never really liked her or believed in her desire, spirit, soul, or talent for finding talent.
Tomei’s Abby is truly the only soul on that stage that doesn’t feel two-dimensional, and that I cared deeply for. Probably because Tomei can find the fascinating complexities in a character that doesn’t always feel, as written, fully fleshed out. She was the one person I wanted to uncover and explore, to understand and engage with, to lean into and unpack her troubled experiences with on that couch. I was ultimately more curious to get to know more about her and her edge than anyone else. She gets called out in The New Group‘s Babe, but I wanted a deeper understanding of the whole album, not just this one sometimes annoying song.
