An Entertaining ‘Isabel’

After reading Michael Phillips’ review of Lisa Loomer’s “Expecting Isabel,” I have come to the conclusion that he does not like to be entertained (“Beyond the Birds and Bees,” Aug. 4). Rather, he seems to enjoy suffering perhaps under the pseudo-intellectual notion that for theater to be deep, it must make you suffer.

Having suffered through three excruciatingly unentertaining plays (which shall remain nameless) that Phillips reviewed favorably, I should not have been surprised that the joyously funny, tearfully poignant and thought-provoking “Isabel” would receive a snide, sarcastic and snooty pan from him.

It is a play that leaves you laughing through tears. Only the insightful exploration of the profound human need to procreate could have that effect on an audience. Loomer manages to passionately question the human drive to have children while at the same time lovingly affirm it. What more could Phillips want?

MALIK C. BURROUGHS

Los Angeles

*

Phillips’ “review” is something more befitting a professor’s critique of his student’s first draft, perhaps. Not meaning to be unkind, guardedly enthusiastic, respectful and, of course, finally unkind. There is cause for alarm if this curious city is really just another one-horse, one-critic town where fates are determined by a Caesarean turn of the thumb.

Yes, Loomer’s funny and serious, seriously funny play has to do with brand-new, modern-day agonies of childbirth and is thereby an extremely interesting metaphor for other agonies here in the land of Progress and the Suburban Assault Vehicle. Her baby is healthy, quite happy and eminently worthwhile. Look in on it at the Mark Taper Forum before some stranger dressed in white takes it away.

JOHN COURT

Santa Barbara