In subsequent sequences, members of their unlikely chorus show up to ask ontological questions, flirt transgressively with potential daddies and reproachfully — and fearfully — imagine the lives they have yet to live. One of them (played by Jaime Maseda), wrapped in a torn garbage bag, becomes a hobbled nightmare musician, taking over the keyboards at the back of the stage to rasp out, “I never learned to walk/I never learned to run/I never learned to drive into the setting sun.”
At other points, they wonder if emerging from the womb is really such a good idea. “You’ll have to rip me out, clawing at the lining,” sing two African-American fetuses, portrayed by Brett Ashley Robinson and Brenson Thomas. “My terror is blinding at the thought of your world.” (Their reluctance may have something to do with their race.)
As you may have gathered, this is not the stuff of classic agitprop cabaret. Only the evangelical scene, led by Katie Gould’s crowd-rousing pastor, comes close to conventional sketch satire.
Other scenes are more subtle in their polemical thrust. A trio of doctors (Mr. Maseda, Mr. Thomas and Scott R. Sheppard) pick up the mics to sing testimonials from women who feel their lives were ruined by having abortions. Please note that the singers themselves are all male.
Seated in a waiting room, the potential clients of these men — embodied by Ms. Yorke, Ms. Gould, Ms. Robinson and Lee Minora — perform what is the show’s most directly affecting number, the one that probably comes closest to a mission statement. Leafing through magazines, which they calmly tear to pieces as the scene proceeds, they deliver their lyrics with cool deliberation.
“I’m not a fable or a hashtag or a cautionary tale,” they sing. And: “I’m not ashamed or embarrassed or incomplete./I don’t feel different, or stronger.” They are tired of other people’s assumptions, they say, and tired of being shouted at.
