Entertainment

There is a lot of womb for improvement

Here’s an alternative title for the new show “Motherhood Out Loud”: “Love, Loss, and What I Gave Birth To.” It’s OK, marketers, you don’t have to thank me.

Conceived by Susan R. Rose and Joan Stein, this anthology of monologues and zippy vignettes aims for a similar demographic as off-Broadway’s runaway hit “Love, Loss, and What I Wore.” Like “Love,” it’s also engineered to provoke aw’s of familiarity and empathy.

A big difference is that the short scenes here are penned by 14 different writers, including Beth Henley, Theresa Rebeck and Lisa Loomer. Considering the show lasts 90 minutes, it’s no wonder that everything is short — several pieces feel as if they were dashed off on the back of a coloring book. And when things get tight, too many of the writers fall back on feel-good clichés.

The evening is broken down into chapters — each one featuring four stories — that start with childbirth, then proceed to school, sex and dating, and kids leaving the nest. By the end, we’ve looped back to childbirth.

But despite the best efforts of director Lisa Peterson and a gifted cast of four, we get only a frustratingly narrow view of what it means to be a mom.

In this world, most mothers are middle-class, and they speak as if reeling out postings from a parenting forum — especially in the several scenes by Michele Lowe. The majority of the snippets are in their voices, as if husbands, lovers and other family members didn’t have anything to say about motherhood.

A couple of pieces stick out, not because they’re by men, but because they offer different perspectives on women. Marco Pennette writes about a gay dad and a surrogate; David Cale about a grown man moving back with his elderly mother. James Lecesne gives eloquent voice to both, alternately touching and funny.

Splitting the rest of the material, Randy Graff (“City of Angels”), Saidah Arrika Ekulona (“Ruined”) and Mary Bacon (“Arcadia”) are so good that they can root out little nuggets of insight from thin air.

Ekulona is particularly vibrant in Lameece Issaq’s “Nooha’s List” — about a Muslim mom dealing with a teenage daughter — and as the mother of a young soldier in Jessica Goldberg’s “Stars and Stripes.” And the riotous Graff suddenly ages several decades as an outspoken great-grandmother in Henley’s “Report on Motherhood.”

Overall, though, the show is so sweet that it achieves a rare effect: It gives you a sugar down.