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Review: In 'The Appointment,' the fetus sings out

(Critic’s Pick): NEW YORK — You may wonder, after “The Appointment” is over, if it wasn’t all a hallucination. Perhaps that is an appropriate response to an abortion-themed musical — one that begins with a performing group of winsome fetuses, as hungry for love and approval as the anxious dancers from “A Chorus Line.”

Review: In 'The Appointment,' the Fetus Sings Out

Yes, they do sing, and dance in formation, too, extolling their charms and virtues and chanting “me, me, me, me, me,” as their umbilical cords wag in rhythm. They will later show up to play peekaboo, among other games, with audience members, and to argue heatedly over their destinies during a Thanksgiving dinner featuring a prophesy-spouting fetus turkey.

And just so you know, there’s a Jesus-like evangelist fetus as well, urging the protection and salvation of his kind. “The Appointment,” which opened Saturday at Next Door at New York Theater Workshop, is the kind of show that makes you feel that you must be under ether, as if during an operation.

What you will definitely not feel after this remarkable phantasmagoria from the Lightning Rod Special troupe is clearheaded. Or smug, or righteous, or vindicated in your beliefs, no matter what they are, about an endlessly divisive subject.

Lightning Rod Special is the Philadelphia-based company that gave us “Underground Railroad Game,” a show that used a middle-school classroom format to dive deep, really deep, into the emotional and sexual dynamics of interracial relationships. That production was a bona fide shocker, in the best tradition of taboo-busting art, and you might have thought that this troupe had gone about as far as it could go in the theater of discomfort.

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But “The Appointment,” created by a four-member writing team led by Alice Yorke and directed by Eva Steinmetz, made me feel just as uneasy, offended, engrossed and, finally, enlightened as “Underground Railroad Game” had. I hasten to add that enlightenment, in this case, involves no definitive conclusions.

Unfolded in a series of songs (composed by the musically multilingual Alex Bechtel) and sketches, this production implicitly pushes arguments for and against abortion to their extreme limits. Those phalanxes of adorable singing fetuses (Jill Keys did the anatomically specific costumes) might be perceived as the ultimate guilt-tripping fantasy for anyone thinking about terminating a pregnancy.

“We’ll make you feel so whole,” they warble, with Shirley Temple lisps and gurgling giggles, in the opening sequence. “We’re what you’ve dreamed of.”

As befits the perversely vaudevillian logic of this show, these squirming figures live in terror of the hook, which could well materialize from the wings to interrupt their performances. Accordingly, the set — designed by Oona Curley, with lighting by Masha Tsimring and sound by Liz Atkinson — presents the womb as a music hall, with red velvet curtains and a three-piece band.

In subsequent sequences, members of their unlikely chorus show up to ask ontological questions, flirt transgressively with potential daddies and reproachfully — and fearfully — imagine the lives they have yet to live. One of them (played by Jaime Maseda), wrapped in a torn garbage bag, becomes a hobbled nightmare musician, taking over the keyboards at the back of the stage to rasp out, “I never learned to walk/ I never learned to run/ I never learned to drive into the setting sun.”

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At other points, they wonder if emerging from the womb is really such a good idea. “You’ll have to rip me out, clawing at the lining,” sing two African-American fetuses, portrayed by Brett Ashley Robinson and Brenson Thomas. “My terror is blinding at the thought of your world.” (Their reluctance may have something to do with their race.)

As you may have gathered, this is not the stuff of classic agitprop cabaret. Only the evangelical scene, led by Katie Gould’s crowd-rousing pastor, comes close to conventional sketch satire.

Other scenes are more subtle in their polemical thrust. A trio of doctors (Maseda, Thomas and Scott R. Sheppard) pick up the mics to sing testimonials from women who feel their lives were ruined by having abortions. Please note that the singers themselves are all male.

Seated in a waiting room, the potential clients of these men — embodied by Yorke, Gould, Robinson and Lee Minora — perform what is the show’s most directly affecting number, the one that probably comes closest to a mission statement. Leafing through magazines, which they calmly tear to pieces as the scene proceeds, they deliver their lyrics with cool deliberation.

“I’m not a fable or a hashtag or a cautionary tale,” they sing. And: “I’m not ashamed or embarrassed or incomplete./ I don’t feel different, or stronger.” They are tired of other people’s assumptions, they say, and tired of being shouted at.

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Yorke appears throughout as a woman in a hospital gown, going through the medical process that precedes an abortion, including an ultrasound and, finally, the operation itself. These scenes are performed with a quiet and naturalism that differ starkly and pointedly from the feverishness of the musical sequences.

Only by the end are you aware of just how carefully calibrated “The Appointment” has been. This thoughtful, profoundly imaginative show concludes in a silence that is all the more eloquent for the sound and the fury that preceded it. It’s a postscript that allows plenty of space for mixed feelings.

Production Notes:

‘The Appointment’

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Through May 4 at Next Door at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; 212-460-5475, nytw.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Credits: Lead artist, Alice Yorke; lead writers, Alice Yorke, Eva Steinmetz, Scott R. Sheppard and Alex Bechtel; composed by Alex Bechtel; directed by Eva Steinmetz; created by Lightning Rod Special in collaboration with the ensemble; sets by Oona Curley; costumes by Jill Keys; lighting by Masha Tsimring; sound by Liz Atkinson; props by Alicia Crosby; choreography by Melanie Cotton; stage manager, Sara Marinich; music director and pianist, Amanda Morton; bassist, Debbie Christine Tjong; percussionist, Michael McCoy Reilly; associate lighting designer, Becky Heisler; assistant sound designer, Taylor Jedlinski; master electrician, Domino Mannheim; audio engineer, Edward Smith; additional creation by nicHi Douglas, Jenson Lavallee and Mason Rosenthal. Presented by Lightning Rod Special.

Cast: Katie Gould, Jaime Maseda, Lee Minora, Brett Ashley Robinson, Scott R. Sheppard, Brenson Thomas and Alice Yorke.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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