CHERISH
Directed by Trevor Schmidt. Written by Ken Duncum. Starring Nadien Chu, Sue Huff, Brad Loucks, Richard Meen. Until May 11. The Third Space (11516-103 St). Tickets available through Northern Light Theatre (471-1586) or TIX on the Square (420-1757/tixonthesquare.ca).

And baby makes...

Well, about nine or so, if you include the lawyers.

Jess and Maeve (that’s two) have each borne a child (four), with the help of Tom (five). The deal would now see Tom’s lawyer partner, the somewhat older William (six), financially assisting Jess and Maeve while Jess carries a kid (seven) for Tom and William.

Once her oven is bunned, however, Jess can’t countenance surrendering her baby, and who could blame her? Actually, Tom does, and who can blame him either? So enter the lawyers (and that, baby, makes nine). 

New Zealand playwright Ken Duncum could have set the fulcrum there, turning Cherish into a pitched battle between warring same-sex couples. Instead, he creates a matrix of tension, setting each of his four characters both alongside and against each of the others, but doing it in a way that feels more natural than mathematical. He digs deeply into parenthood and maturity and compromise, manipulating your sympathies and antipathies to fully explore how biology, behaviour, dollars, and temperament mess with our idealized notions of momhood and dadhood.
 
Northern Light Theatre’s production of Cherish largely takes advantage of those shifting perceptions, thanks in part to director Trevor Schmidt’s sage casting. Newcomer Nadien Chu confidently renders Jess’ radiant idealism, and then just as adroitly exposes her sulky materialism. As a counterpoint, Maeve initially comes across as unlikable—too sour, too bitter, too shrill—but we’ll learn that she vulnerable, threatened by Jess’ bisexuality and bounded (or grounded) by her own sense of practicality, all of which Sue Huff gets down without flash but with a compelling measure of rawness.  
Richard Meen has a challenging task, not so much in taking Tom from self-absorbed rake to petulant tailing pond of resentment, but in carrying off his eleventh-hour epiphany. That may be one transformation too far, so give Meen credit for making the early Tom a truly insufferable jerk and a squirm-inducing liar.

But it’s William who stands at Cherish’s relatively level-headed and imperfectly hopeful centre—it turns out that the character best suited to being a parent is the one who seems the least interested in becoming one—and Brad Loucks hits the right note of gentle sadness. Maeve tells him how nice he is: “I’m not nice,” William replies, “I’m just middle-aged.” His world-wise squareness approaches coolness in Loucks’ hands. 

Great. But dumping a loaded diaper onto the coffee table are the mawkish (and sometimes tacky) photo-musical interludes between scenes: they’re intrusive at worst, unnecessary at best, merely pointing in the direction the text was already heading.