Baby with the Bathwater — Brisbane Arts Theatre

Overview

You have to hand it to Brisbane Arts Theatre — they know how to kick off their 2016 season. The Petrie Terrace-based organisation obviously wants the laughs to flow freely, and the contemporary commentary too.

Christopher Durang's Baby with the Bathwater is their first cab off the rank for the year, and it promises plenty of both. It tells the comedic tale of parents so unprepared for their new task — and so determined to be polite about it, even to their newborn — that they refuse to discover the gender of their child.

All things farcical and satirical ensue in a play that also throws an anti-Mary Poppins into the mix. If you're still not convinced, then perhaps The New Yorker can change your mind. When Baby with the Bathwater first premiered in 1983, the prestigious publication was so impressed that they called Durang "one of the funniest dramatists alive", after all.