‘Cry It Out’ @ Onstage in Bedford
Photos/graphic courtesy of Onstage in Bedford
—Jan Farrington
I remember those days. Oh, do I remember them.
Clearly, so did many of the moms (and dads, too) seeing Onstage in Bedford’s Cry It Out this weekend. The sudden laughs and murmurs coming from the audience said plenty about the memories and emotions Molly Smith Metzler’s new play about the first months of parenthood (mostly motherhood, but with a dad thrown into the mess for good measure) was bringing back to them.
Metzler’s honest, funny, dark-edged script—with an impressive display of absolutely natural, believable dialogue—is a vivid portrait of the joys and despair of this watershed time in a lot of our lives, the hardest days we ever loved and hated all at once. And Cry It Out is especially true and direct in its depiction of just how hard (aka almost impossible) this country makes it for moms.
No wonder the U.S. birth rate is dropping like a rock.
Director Libby Hawkins and a compelling cast of four never hit a false note. The story moves at a good clip (it plays out in just over 90 minutes), and the actors create characters we’re drawn to. Twenty minutes in, we’re worried about them all.
The core of the story is a friendship: Jessie and Lina, two moms who share the back yard of a duplex in the New York City ‘burbs, first talk when Jessie (Kim Winnubst) hurtles “over the cantaloupe” in the local Stop N Shop to say hello to Lina (Peyton Rogers), a hospital worker with a new baby boy. Jessie is a corporate lawyer, also on leave. Except for the bond of new motherhood, they’re a pair without much in common: Lina lives with her mother-in-law and underemployed husband, and knows she’ll have to go back to work in a few weeks. Jessie, we find, isn’t sure what she wants to do: she can’t imagine leaving her daughter, but staying home would upset her husband’s plans for a big house and a posh school.
Rogers’ Lina is a lively, naturally funny New York girl, who grew up in a town where, if she yells her Italian last name on the beach, most of the heads will turn. She loves her little Max, but knows she might have to leave him with a grandma who isn’t to be trusted: day care (or much less, a nanny) is out of their reach. Jessie could afford the nanny—but she’s in love with her baby Allison, and it’s killing her to think about leaving her for the corporate law that bores her. Both women are lonely, and become close friends in a flash. This is a battle, and they’re in this female foxhole together. Both characters get under our skin and into our hearts in no time.
Enter dad Mitchell (Michael Speck), who has an awful time explaining why he’s barged into the back yard (a spot where both Jessie and Lina’s baby monitors work while the little ones nap). He finally comes clean: he’s been watching them (with binoculars) from his house on the bluff above them. He’s a new dad, and thinks his wife needs to join their (from his vantage point) adorable mom’s group.
Speck’s Mitchell exudes warmth, caring, concern—a sensitive New Age guy, you know? But wife Adrienne (Sarah Powell), who agrees to drop by just to tick a box for her husband, strikes us as cold, exasperated, and snobby. She’s an entrepreneur on the rise, with a disapproving side-eye for every (stupid) choice Lina and Jessie have made. Powell’s Adrienne is hilariously awful (the lemon in this fruit salad of friendship) but could there be more to her than we think? If you guess “yes,” chances are you’re right.
In the play’s last scenes, there are quarrels, tough decisions, changes of address and expectations, plus a memorable speech pushing back against our too-quick judgments of women and their choices. Cry It Out is a show worth seeing, both for the this-needs-fixing society it shows us—and the great characters we get to know. I’m still worrying about them.
WHEN: June 5-22, 2025
WHERE: Old Bedford School, 2400 School Lane, Bedford TX
WEB: onstageinbedford.com
