‘Emma’s Child’ Funny but Emotionally Unsatisfying

Kristine Thatcher’s “Emma’s Child” has a subject that’s undoubtedly worthy of dramatic exploration. Based on her own experience adopting a child, Thatcher wrote about a teacher, Jean (Penelope Lindblom), who, after 15 years of fertility treatments, has decided to adopt.

Emma (Catherine Domareki) is a young girl living with her unseen alcoholic father. Emma chooses Jean and her husband, Henry (Alan Brooks), to adopt her unborn child. Once born, the child is severely disabled. While Jean reaches out to become a real mother, her husband withdraws.

The text could use some judicious editing and reworking to avoid redundancy and confusing time switches. Even so, this International City Theatre production has a greater problem: Lindblom doesn’t express the painful nuances of a conflicted woman except in seemingly forced and excessive bursts of emotion and facial contortions.

Director Shashin Desai pushes the plot a tad too close to melodrama, and some of the scene transitions do not smoothly separate the already confusing flash-forward, rewind-backward scene changes. At times, the characters step among the three set areas--Jean and Henry’s home on the left, the hospital in the middle and the all-purpose office on the right. The looseness of the time and sequence creates a crazy chronology that is further complicated by this odd flow among separate stage areas.

Yet Desai skillfully handles the humorous parts.

As the male nurse, Laurence, Terry Ray is both funny and wisely sober in a sitcom way. His interplay with Jean and the young but culturally dense nurse’s aide, Mary Jo (Kathryn Velvel), are unerringly hilarious. He’s the real gem of this show--so much so that one almost wishes the play was about him.

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And why not? Thatcher’s script is inherently unfair, failing to explore the emotional tribulations that the birth mother might have gone through. Thatcher explains how distance and poverty conspired against the young Emma and then quickly eliminates her from the play. The tension between Jean, Henry and Emma is lost and so is the possible added perspective on Jean. As currently written, Jean is almost too saintly for earth--and her husband.

* “Emma’s Child,” International City Theatre, Long Beach City College, Clark Street and Harvey Way, Long Beach. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $22. Ends Sunday. (562) 938-4128. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.