Babe

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If you don’t know what A&R is in the music industry you are at a definite disadvantage while watching The New Group’s New York premiere of Jessica Goldberg’s Babe. Although Scott Elliott’s production is glib and polished, there are several choices that the author has made that make the play difficult to follow. Nevertheless, legendary actors Arliss Howard and Marisa Tomei as longtime successful music industry producers are fascinating to watch.

When the play begins, Katherine (Gracie McGraw) is being interviewed by famed music producer Gus (Howard) and his right hand woman Abigail (Tomei) at EXA Records for a position as junior A&R rep, that is, in music lingo, a talent agent for artists and repertoire responsible for finding and developing new performers and music. Katherine at age 25 has done this at a small, independent studio but wants to enter the big time. Gus in his 60s is a dinosaur, vulgar, rude, misogynistic, crude, obscene. Abby tries to keep him in line by reminding him of what he can’t say but he does not take her hints and continues to shock Katherine by his language and anecdotes.

What neither of them know is that Katherine is from the #MeToo generation and isn’t going to take what the other female employees like Abby have put up with all these years. (In a private meeting with Abby later, she will point out that in her 32 years with the record label, Abby has never had her name onf a single record, even when she had discovered the artist, although Abby tells her as a woman she would not have kept her job if she had complained.) With a mother who is both a lawyer and a District Attorney, Katherine is personally going to put a stop to the toxic environment that has famously gone on at EXA Records for decades against both men and women.

Aside from a required knowledge of A&R, the play goes backward in time with no warning, starting in 2023 and including unidentified flashbacks in 1999 and 1989. More confusing is that Gracie McGraw who plays Katherine also plays Kat Wonder, Abby’s most successful discovery both in flashback and in hallucination while Abby is getting chemotherapy for cancer. The actors never leave the stage when they are not in a scene but sit quietly somewhere on the set which is not obvious immediately. Still more confusing is that it is not clear until half way through the play’s 90 minutes that the feminist agenda of putting an end to toxic male corporate culture is the theme of the story.

Howard is excellent as the out-of-date music producer who does not know that his day is done. We get the feeling that Gus has gone through sensitivity training recently but it has not taken. So glib is he that we realize he has always been like this and there is no changing him. In a role that requires her to be subservient to her boss, Tomei is decidedly low-key, different from most of her famous portrayals. In the course of the play, challenged by Katherine she reveals layer upon layer of her personality and her life and career. McGraw has the unenviable job of creating two characters with the same name and without changing her costume. As Katherine she is aggressive and unpleasant even when we agree with her positions. She seems to want to upend the company all at once though sometimes you have to destroy something in order to build it up from the bottom up.

Derek McLane’s sets are problematic. The two main sets are Gus’ office with its many framed gold records and Abby’ apartment which has as many albums as one can fit into such a small space. Unfortunately, Abby’s sessions in the hospital are off to the side on the same set so that we are never entirely certain if we are somewhere else (Sloan Kettering?) or she is hallucinating. Gus’ office has the word “BABE” in bright pink neon letters on the wall but there does not seem to have been a group with that name and he only uses the expression  twice for Abigail and once for Katherine, although he says a great many more demeaning things in the course of the play. The costumes by Jeff Mahshie are fine but the performers remain in the same outfits even though the play travels back first 25 and then 32 years in time. Cha See’s lighting is more successful giving different scenes various moods which parallel the emotions of the drama. The original music is by BETTY, the iconic NYC-based pop/rock trio composed of Allyson Palmer, Elizabeth Ziff and Amy Ziff, just the sort of group Gus and Abby are seeking in the play.

While Jessica Goldberg’s Babe may confuse you as well as remind you of such works like Stereophonic which cover similar ground, it remains engrossing and good theater though you may not always be certain what is going on. The work of Arliss Howard and especially Marisa Tomei showing new depths is exemplary, while Gracie McGraw’s character may leave you scratching your head. However, in Katherine she is certainly playing a believable modern young lady who knows exactly what she wants. Babe seems entirely authentic even when it expects its audience to keep up with its insider descriptions and revelations.

Babe (through December 22, 2024)

The New Group

Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater, Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.thenewgroup.org/production/babe/

Running time: 90 minutes without an intermission