The premise of “The Call” is ripped from the headlines — or rather from the parenting chat rooms where some white middle-class couples share their thoughts about adopting kids from Africa.
In Tanya Barfield’s new play, Peter (Kelly AuCoin) and Annie (Kerry Butler) set their sights abroad after fertility drugs and an Arizona adoption fail. At first, Peter isn’t too keen when his wife suggests Africa: “We’ll have to deal with everyone thinking we’re making a baby fashion statement.”
He quickly gives in, though, as he’s wont to do. Indeed, Annie always prevails through passive-aggression and obsessiveness.
“I think about things,” she tells Peter. “You go to sleep every night, I stay up surfing the Web, thinking about the ramifications.”
This is just one of the many perceptive observations by Barfield, herself a biracial adoptive mother. They benefit from a fine production, gently directed by Leigh Silverman on Rachel Hauck’s spot-on set — look for the rolled-up yoga mat in Annie and Peter’s living room.
But the heavy lifting is done by the ace cast, including Butler, the likable star of the musicals “Xanadu” and “Catch Me If You Can,” who manages to make the self-involved Annie less than entirely grating.
You’d think Annie might be interested in befriending or at least talking to her new African neighbor, Alemu (Russell G. Jones), but she shows no interest.
She’s also dismayed when she realizes that the baby she was counting on may actually be closer to 4 years old. “This is not what I expected,” she complains. “Not what I wanted.”
Too bad adopting isn’t like ordering from Zappos.
Peter and Annie process their hopes and frustrations with their best friends Rebecca (Eisa Davis, “Passing Strange”) and Drea (Crystal A. Dickinson, last from “Clybourne Park”), an African-American couple.
These two take over the show every time they’re onstage, especially Dickinson’s droll, no-nonsense Drea, and Barfield nails their couple dynamics. “Don’t trust her,” Drea jokes after Rebecca offers to help with the incoming kid’s hair, “she can’t commit to getting a Shih Tzu.”
But there’s a sense of missed opportunity, too, as Barfield dwells on a half-baked subplot about Rebecca’s late brother rather than on trans-racial adoption’s knotty implications.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all: Better a good domestic dramedy than a failed politico-social diatribe.