Theater review by Adam Feldman
Putting the word shitshow in the title of your play seems almost like a dare to the writer of an unenthusiastic review. I will resist the easy jab, though, because writer-director Aya Ogawa’s carnivalesque pageant—which explores and explodes different facets of motherhood through satirical vignettes, musical numbers and bouffon body horror—is audacious in more than its name. The show is intent on airing ugly and troubling aspects of maternity, and Ogawa delivers them cesarean style: with a few deep cuts and a lot of mess.
Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
Meat Suit is being produced by Second Stage, and it has aptly created a secondary space for itself at the Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage. The venue’s usual seats are cordoned off, and the audience is guided instead to a womblike playing area that scenic designer Jian Jung has festooned with lumpy, pendulous blobs that suggest internal organs as drawn by Dr. Seuss. In a similar spirit, Jung attires the cast’s five actresses—Marina Celander, Cindy Cheung, Robyn Kerr, Maureen Sebastian and Liz Wisan, proven talents all—in bodysuits bursting with grotesque stuffed appendages that evoke internal and sexual organs. (They also recall Jill Keys’s fetus costumes in Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment.)
Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
Unfortunately, the show’s goop is not just of the visceral variety. A project of this kind requires a spiky anarchic insouciance that neither the writing nor the performances consistently achieve. Like its set, the production sags: You watch it wishing that the jokes were sharper—despite Meat Suit’s feminist attitude, its arrows are often aimed at tired caricatures of women—and that the songs, by Leyna Marika Papach, were better crafted and better sung. (The former don’t get laughs; the latter don’t get applause.) And when the cast members step forward to share ostensibly personal stories from their own experience as mothers, their sincerity feels even more strained than the comedy. As much as one might admire the conception, the experience is laborious.
Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood. Pershing Square Signature Center (Off Broadway). By Aya Ogawa. Directed by Ogawa. With Marina Celander, Cindy Cheung, Robyn Kerr, Maureen Sebastian, Liz Wisan. Running time: 1hrs 35mins. No intermission.
Follow Adam Feldman on X: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Adam Feldman on Bluesky: @FeldmanAdam
Follow Adam Feldman on Threads: @adfeldman
Watch Adam Feldman's theater podcast on YouTube: Sitting Ovations
Follow Time Out Theater on X: @TimeOutTheater
Keep up with the latest news and reviews on our Time Out Theater Facebook page
Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus
