What If They Ate The Baby? ★★★★

Natasha Roland and Xhloe Rice are a New York City-based performing clown duo who deserve to be far better known in the Big Apple. The two multidisciplinary artists have accomplished an almost unbelievable feat: they won prestigious The Scotsman Fringe First awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival three times in a row, from 2022 to 2024. Winning three Fringe Firsts in three years is astonishing; only about 15 out of nearly 4,000 Edinburgh shows receive one each season, so the fact that Roland and Rice have completed a Fringe First hat trick is significant. If they were based in the U.K., they’d be funded out the wazoo.

But they’re not. They’re based here in NYC. Fortunately, theatergoers on this side of the pond can now learn what all the fuss is about, as for a full month the duo will be performing What If They Ate the Baby? at SoHo Playhouse, which premiered in Scotland in 2023 and, until now, has only had one U.S. preview performance. Roland and Rice have continued to develop the show as a wild mash-up of Ionesco and The Stepford Wives that is both challenging and entertaining in equal measure.

The play opens with Shirley (Roland) vigorously scrubbing her floor in a fashion that Lady Macbeth would approve: no spots will be spared. Her cleaning regimen is soon interrupted by her neighbor Dottie (Rice), who’s pretty in pink and pearls. Shirley had recently made a roast as an expression of condolence, and Dottie’s come to return the dish and thank her in passive-aggressive fashion. The overlapping politeness is delivered rapidly, as can be seen in the script where period punctuation is inconsistently used as the two talk about the cheesy panko Dottie baked on top of the roast:

Dottie: Ya know, my momma always taught me to grate my own parmesan, it’s a little more work but the difference is just astounding

Shirley: Oh I do grate my own parmesan

Dottie: Oh really? I don’t know it just tasted like the kind you get in a bottle

Shirley: Nope!

Dottie: It just tasted like that –

Shirley: No, no, I mean parmesan is parmesan but I do always grate my own.

Dottie: Oh yeah? For some reason I couldn’t tell!

Shirley: Right

Dottie: Absolutely

This seemingly benign suburban housewife scenario is off from the start. Dottie becomes the neighbor who won’t leave. Or does, then returns; parts of their initial meeting repeat and blur like so many daily domestic duties. And they’re not alone. There’s a constant knocking at the door, as well as the sound of footsteps from above. Plus, weird happenings are afoot in the neighborhood, and some residents apparently are being taken in by the authorities for questioning. But for what?

Short scenes are broken up with vibrant dance interludes that are brilliantly choreographed to reveal that which cannot be spoken. Roland and Rice are both terrific dancers, their physicalities specific to their characters and their moves perfectly synchronized. The music and movement also energize the piece, and it’s in these interludes that the production is most irresistible.

Where the play falters slightly is in the clarity of the storytelling. At times, the story becomes confusing. Not in a satisfying, eventually illuminated mystery way, but in a way that leaves some thematic clarity just out of reach. Perplexity is a key component of absurdist pieces, so that is in and of itself unproblematic, but as the show reaches its conclusion, a creeping vagueness remains when it feels like the production wants to make some salient points about the ways society insists on trying to police women’s bodies and behaviors.

That bit of nitpicking aside, What If They Ate the Baby? is without question an exciting theatrical venture unlike anything else currently on offer in New York, and Roland and Rice are too talented to miss. So don’t.