Mothers and Fathers Doing Well

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

BABY Music by David Shire; Lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. Book by Sybille Pearson

What's this? A Broadway musical that comes out foursquare for motherhood? And, for that matter, fatherhood? Shades of George M. Cohan! Nor is that by any means the end of the sins against chic committed by Baby. It is set in a leafy college town, about as far as you can get from show business, which seems to provide the themes and setting for most of Broadway's current musicals. And in a theatrical atmosphere where producers will spend millions on state-of-the-glitz stagecraft but not a penny for tribute to the ordinary issues that animate ordinary people, Baby makes do with a cast of 15, an undersized orchestra and sets that consist largely of diaphanous draperies constantly awhirl to signify scene changes.

Logically (and originally) enough, Baby is about the process of having one. For the youngest of its three central couples (Liz Callaway and Todd Graff), this is as easy and cheering as rolling into bed of an evening. For a slightly older pair (Catherine Cox and Martin Vidnovic), it is an anguish; their scientifically orchestrated struggle to conceive is a humiliation to him and a vast inconvenience to her romantic impulses. For the oldest twosome (Beth Fowler and James Congdon), who already have three grown children, it is a bestartlement; they had no idea that weekend at the Plaza would put such a stimulating glow into their sunset years. It is the virtue of Sybille Pearson's book that the principals never become archetypes, thanks to her gift for tart dialogue and pleasant personification. It is the defect of her writing that things proceed a little too smoothly. Some second-act confusions and reversals might well have been in order.

But if Baby's heart is a little too much in the right place, its head is very correctly concentrated on the things that should matter the most in a musical. David Shire's score (artfully orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick) is alive and kicking and often whimsically satirical of what seems to be the entire range of contemporary pop styles. The lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr. are intricate without being show-offy; his rhymes never lose sight of their reason for being. And the staging, also by Maltby, is rather like his lyrics, fluid and inventive without ever seeming to strain.

The women have the best of the book and the best of the songs, and it is impossible to choose a favorite among the sweetly earnest Callaway, the game and leggy Cox, the knowing but uncynical Fowler. But it is Callaway who has the show's signature song, a first-act finale that somehow summarizes Baby's strengths. Called The Story Goes On, it is, of all things, a hymn to the joys of joining the great chain of being. It could have been bathetic. It could have been pretentious. It could have been desperate. But like much else in an entrancing entertainment show that only looks small and simple, it succeeds in making you feel good without making you feel stupid. That is a rare quality in an up number. It is an even rarer quality in the musical theater of the moment. --By Richard Schickel This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.