Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays

by Christopher Durang

“Laughing wild amid severest woe” perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Samuel Beckett) and the previously unpublished Baby with the Bathwater. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate clichés of self-affirmation he learns at his “per­sonality workshop,” they run the gamut of everyday life’s small brutalizations until they meet, with disastrous inevitability, at the Harmonic Convergence in Central Park.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Comedy, Humor, American, Fiction

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 1989

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a collection of two plays and a couple afterwards by eccentric playwright Christopher Durang. he probably reached his pinnacle in the 80s, but his body of work is still quite relevant (and his plays are considered reliable standbys) in modern absurdist theatre.

he has a great website that provides an overview of his work:
http://www.christopherdurang.com/

if you ever watch an interview with him, you will see a really charming, amusing and down-to-earth guy. I had a bit of a crush on him back in the day.

4 Stars for "Laughing Wild".

Woman: I feel terribly sorry for my doctors. Doctors get exhausted listening to me, I can tell they feel my words are charging out of my mouth and trying to invade their brain cells, and they're frightened. Understandably.

this is basically two overlapping, soul-searching monologues about a man and a woman experiencing disorienting crises of identity. at times it is amazing and often weirdly moving. the woman: near-crazy, savagely judgmental, hysterical and hysterically funny. her monologues really have that I AM SCREAMING ON THE INSIDE feeling done just right. she's outrageous and stylized but Durang knows what he's doing and so she's never reduced to caricature. you've felt the way she's felt, although hopefully on a lesser scale. the man: dithering, well-intentioned, nervous, and rather superficial despite his attempts to find meaning. this guy also flirts with comic cartoonishness but Durang finds his center, makes him plausible and sympathetic and allows the reader/audience to connect with him. the connection between these two (initially she hits him in the head at a supermarket after he takes too long choosing a can of tuna fish, but their connections continue) starts as absurd, moves into the bizarrely surreal (Sally Jesse Raphael and the Infant of Prague come into play), and ends at a place that is emotional and rather beautiful. I've seen this one performed and when done live, it is a genuinely exciting experience.

2 Stars for "Baby with the Bathwater".

Nanny: Haven't you read The Brothers Karamazov? Ivan Karamazov realizes that because there is no God, everything is permitted

sometimes absurdism (and extreme stylization) just annoys me, gets under my skin in the wrong sort of way. I saw a performance art piece last weekend, my God the things I'll do to get laid, and I felt the same way. in the performance art piece, the topic was political oppression. in this play, the topics are child neglect, the selfishness of some parents, and how the child's personality is impacted by the actions of those parents. stylization is great when there is a genuine core of emotional truth at the center, a place where I can connect. stylization becomes tedious to me when I don't find that connection, when all I'm experiencing is someone's cleverness. I did not connect with this play. but hey it is definitely clever! and so was the performance art piece. I wish cleverness was enough.

3 Stars for the two Afterwards. in the first, Durang reams the critical establishment in NYC, honing in on one critic whose opinion makes or breaks a play and criticizing the Times' inability to be supportive to the theatrical world by their positioning of this critic as the sole decider of what is good and what is not. this was surprising and a bit mortifying to read, but I really appreciated its naked honesty and anger. I sure hope the situation has changed since this was published. the second Afterward gives behind-the-scenes information on the two plays, which was only vaguely interesting. still, I quite like Durang so I don't mind reading his thoughts on this or that.

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first encountered these plays when I was in high school and Christopher Durang was a favorite among the theater kids. I laughed at the irreverent, naughty absurdities of Baby with the Bathwater, and a friend of mine did the Laughing Wild tuna fish monologue in acting class. Returning to these plays ten years later, I am no longer so enchanted by their kooky irrationality, but I am more attuned to their undercurrents of sorrow and outrage. I can also see their flaws a little more clearly: as Durang notes in his afterword, both of these plays were originally written as one-acts and then expanded into full-lengths, and especially in the case of Baby with the Bathwater, the seams show.

[Alice B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in paperback. A friend had gifted this to me on my birthday way back in high school. I had never read it. I definitely enjoyed the absurdist nature of these plays and actually found the social commentary shockingly still relevant. Enjoyed baby with the bathwater a bit more because the monologue style of Laughing Wild was hard to read while on vacation with 14 people. Would absolutely go see either play.

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I randomly saw a tiny production of Laughing Wild at the request of a friend and was blown away by the two actors. Also it had been a long while since I had seen a Durang play and had forgotten the intense uncomfortableness of "what exactly have I gotten myself into", which was only heightened in a theater with all of ten seats.

[Chambers Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baby with the Bathwater was my gateway drug to Durang.
And 35 years later it is still hilarious!

[Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today’s premier practitioner of absurdist theater and the funniest playwright alive, Christopher Durang gives us two more gems. “Baby with the Bathwater” is a hilarious look at dysfunctional parenting and one young man’s search for identity after his folks mistakenly named him Daisy and spent his childhood dressing him in pretty frocks. “Laughing Wild” is a surreal piece with two brilliantly funny, touching monologues and then what can only be described as an Acid Trip in One Act, featuring Sally Jesse Raphael, the Infant of Prague and a malevolent can of tuna. Wonderful black comedies.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The play Baby with Bathwater is really amazing and amusing in a twisted way like all Durang plays, Laughing Wild though is still good, yet is mainly monologues, making it slightly hard to get through compared to the rest of his plays.

[Jasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comedy with a heaping teaspoon of arsenic. Psychological upset abound. The Afterwords are as thought provoking as the plays themselves. Both plays were delightful to me, and I'm a hopeless fan of Durang.

[Courtney Tisch]

He is just amazing, that's all there is to it.

[Kelda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ha Ha, more like an example of how not to parent! Devon got this for me when I was pregnant since he had once been Daisy in a production of this play ("Baby with the Bathwater").

[Kailee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved Baby with the Bathwater & hated Laughing Wild. I actually saw a production of Baby with the Bathwater at my college & loved it.

[Carmen von Rohr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. The first play in this collection did nothing for me. The second was better, with some decent social commentary, which is mostly outdated now.