Robin Morgan:
The "otherizing" of women is the oldest oppression known to our species, and it's the model, the template, for all other oppressions.

PRESS: REVIEW

Expecting Isabel
John Townsend, Star Tribune

Two small theater companies are relishing provocative comedies that tap into fears and anxieties of recent times. Theatre Unbound is staging an exhilarating production of "Expecting Isabel" at St. Paul's Lowry Lab Theater. Though it premiered a dozen years ago, long before Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar hit the tabloids, playwright Lisa Loomer was prescient in revealing the compulsion, exploitation and heartache, not just of women, but men as well, in the quest for that bundle of joy.

Director Rebecca Rizzio's masterful cast careens on a madcap rollercoaster ride where an infertile married couple subject themselves to a vast range of humiliations in hope of having or finding a baby. She pumps herself up with fertility drugs while he agonizes over his sluggish sperm. They fret over possible brain damage foisted on adoptable tots born of drug addicts. Righteous relatives intrude with traditional childbearing prejudices. Subconscious race, disability and gender fixations play into what's seen as the ideal child.

Christine Winkler Johnson and Eric Knutson brilliantly anchor Miranda and Nick with a deep sense of human anguish, yet sparkle with the brisk comic timing crucial to make the piece work.

In one shattering scene, Nora Montanez astounds as a desperate pregnant woman fettered by poverty, religious pressures and misogyny. In group therapy, Delta Rae Giordano delights as a condescending old-guard feminist who thinks the younger gals don't appreciate her ilk.