Although she is based in Iowa City, where she teaches dramatic literature at the University of Iowa, playwright and monologist Megan Gogerty is making quite a name for herself right here in Atlanta.
In 2006, Actor’s Express premiered “Love Jerry,” her decidedly dark musical about a recovering pedophile. In 2009, Synchronicity Theatre brought Gogerty back to perform “Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant,” a comedic one-woman show detailing how she ultimately reconciled her political and feminist ideals with the decision to have a child.
Gogerty’s new solo piece, “Feet First in the Water with a Baby in My Teeth,” a co-production between Synchronicity and Iowa City’s Riverside Theatre, is a sequel of sorts that picks up her story shortly thereafter. “So, I have this kid,” she quips as the lights rise, referring to her 3-month-old son “Turk,” so nicknamed because, at 10-1/2 pounds, he was born about the size of a holiday turkey.
On the mostly bare stage of the Balzer Theatre at Herren’s, with only a couple of chairs to use for props and a lone window frame for set dressing, Gogerty presents a running commentary on the challenges of motherhood and the sacrifices it requires of her writing career, her personal life and, indeed, even her sense of sanity.
“Feet First” is as much a stand-up routine as it is a full-fledged theatrical undertaking, but Gogerty establishes a genuine rapport with the audience that rarely wavers. Between amusing anecdotes on such familiar topics as breast-feeding or infant-in-arms air travel, the show rings truest in its more individualized moments.
In one warmly observed segment, Gogerty pays tribute to Dolly Parton as an “uplifting inspiration,” a self-made woman who overcame certain country-music preconceptions and earned the right to be taken seriously (though it’s surprising that a bigger deal isn’t made of the fact Parton had no children). In another, she draws parallels and distinctions between her own current ordeals and those hardships faced by some of her maternal ancestors.
A few other vignettes border on trivial and tasteless, comparatively unrelated to the matter at hand. One is about growing up on a farm and learning the proper way to butcher a chicken. Another is about a grocery-store mishap involving a urinary emergency (hers, mind you, not Turk’s) – basically a bit of potty humor that might seem more appropriate to “Motherhood, the Musical.”
It’s not as if Gogerty is the first person to ever question the traditional roles of mothers as caregivers and fathers as breadwinners, or to discover that “a baby’s birth takes a few hours (while) a mother’s birth takes much longer.” She may not break a lot of new ground in the show, but her winning personality shines through.
Theater review
“Feet First in the Water with a Baby in My Teeth”
Grade: B-
Through Dec. 18. 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 7 p.m. Sundays. $18-$45. The Balzer Theatre at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 404-484-8636. synchrontheatre.com.
Bottom line: More pithy than profound.
