There are only three people on stage...

There are only three people on stage in “And Baby Makes Seven.” The other characters are imaginary--except for the one who is yet to be born.

“It’s about a menage of friends who are having a baby in a non-conventional family,” explained Paula Vogel of her play, opening Friday at Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The family includes two lesbians (played by Kim O’Kelley and Valerie Landsburg), their friend Peter (Peter Antony Jacobs), and their imaginary offspring: 9-year-old child genius Cecil; 8-year-old Henri--the little French boy from “The Red Balloon”--and a 7-year-old wild child, raised by dogs.

“Peter has problems with the children; he worries about how much the women should be giving rein to their fantasies--especially now, with the real kid coming into the world,” said Vogel, who has seen her play staged in St. Louis, Alaska, Boston and San Francisco. “But for the women, the imaginary characters are a way of releasing anxiety.”

Never a mother herself (“although I’m everyone’s godmother, everyone’s aunt”), Vogel got her initial inspiration from watching many of her friends having children--and from the highly charged nature of that maternal bond. “The play comes out of a number of places,” said the author, who has run the playwriting program at Brown University since 1985. “It’s kind of a lighter version of ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ It’s about the necessity for comedy and fantasy. And it’s about the urges to love and kill our children--and how we face them.”

Peggy Shannon directs.