Expecting Isabel

There's good news and bad news about Expecting Isabel. The good news is that Lisa Loomer, an ex-standup comic and sitcom writer, is a funny writer, someone who can find much humor in the trials and tribulations of a 40-something couple trying desperately for its first child. The bad news is she will stoop at nothing to get laughs: cartoon characters, cliche ethnic types, dubious one- liners. Loomer also stretches out her thin story to such inordinate length that it ends up wearing out its welcome.

She starts her tale of infertility at the very beginning, by introducing us to Miranda (Julie White) and Nick (Anthony Crivello), whose relatively happy marriage (he's an unsuccessful sculptor; she supports them by writing greeting-card jingles) becomes unhinged when they decide it's time they added offspring to the family equation. With the slightly ditzy but effervescent Miranda narrating, we learn that, after much impassioned lovemaking, she cannot conceive. Medical tests follow (Fred Applegate plays their smarmy doctor), resulting in the discovery that Nick's sperm (the subject of many, many jokes) has no penetrating power. Nick, being Italian (from a stereotypical family replete with devout mama (Jane Galloway), macho papa (Applegate again), sex-mad brother (Marc Odets), and foul-mouthed sister-in-law (Eileen Galindo)), takes it as a slur on his Mediterranean manhood and goes into a funk. This leads Miranda and Nick to group therapy, experiments with hormone injections, uterine invasions and other indignities all of which Loomer lampoons mercilessly. The pressure and disappointments drive Miranda and Nick apart, but love (and a brief stint of living at home again) bring them together for a final assault on parenthood: adoption. This process, too, is satirized by Loomer, but in such an over-wrought way (three betrayals by contracted birth mothers when one would have sufficed dramatically) that Expecting Isabel begins to pall rather than amuse.

Directed by Douglas C. Wager in snappy but two-dimensional fashion, acted by a cast that mugs and cavorts shamelessly (8 actors playing 29 characters), Loomer's play comes off as more burlesque than comedy.