Review: ‘MotherFreakingHood!’ offers cocktails and catharsis for exhausted moms at Mercury Theater
Chicago’s Southport Corridor teems with young moms, their babies and toddlers, and the Mercury Theater is hosting a new commercially produced musical aimed squarely at those very mothers, hopefully liberated by their partners for a girls’ night out replete with bespoke cocktails and a rolling series of catharses at the Venus Cabaret.
Here’s the appeal of “MotherFreakingHood!,” a better-than-you-probably-think show written by Julie Dunlap and Sara Stotts and already a popular attraction in Kansas City: It’s simple. This rather charming show says, and sings, that you are not alone.
Artists usually prefer to challenge and try and change things, and fair enough. But I’ve long thought that dispensing that kind of comfort, and the associated fun and stress relief, is a wholly legitimate and morally righteous purpose of dramatic entertainment. And it’s an area where live musical theater has a huge advantage. Unlike some piece of steaming pap or TikTok veritas, going to “MotherFreakingHood!” (not the best title) means you are surrounded by others on the parenting journey, laughing and crying alongside you. And, yes, there are a few moist-eyed moments, aptly depicting what parenting does to hitherto well-protected emotions.
The show, which follows three mothers, one a parenting neophyte, another a second-kid parent and the third nurturing an unexpected bundle of, ahem, yet more joy, offers episodes for all the various stages toward the inevitable emptying of the nest (a truly terrible phenomenon for which your critic here has particular current empathy). There’s the pregnancy test; the first visit to the gynecologist; the birthing process with its baked-in battle between spirituality and science; the oppressive preschool peer group; the sudden invasion of teenagerdom, perfectly timed to ruin all a parent has so far achieved and, eventually, either liberation or a gut-wrenching glimpse of obsolescence and morality. It all depends on how optimistic your particular outlook on life. Or how many cocktails are on your table.
At first, I thought the show (which has a Chicago-based Equity cast) resembled the 1980s musical “Baby,” and, indeed, it has a similarly sticky pop-Broadway score with catchy tunes and a couple of powerful ballads for belters like Leah Morrow to market to the brunching moms across the street. But “Baby” did not voyage so deep into the contours of the body of the mother, so to speak, and this all-female cast and crew (Heidi Van directs and musical direction is by Linda Madonia) has a level of detail and authenticity that’s crucial, I think, to the palpable pleasure of its audience. I saw understudy Annie Beaubien (replacing the ailing Tafadzwa Diener), but she matched nicely a stellar cast of musical comedians, featuring Jacquelyne Jones, Maya Rowe (playing a variety of people mothers meet) and Morrow, a potential Chicago star still waiting for the right leading role.
Stotts has a background in Chicago improv and this show is far funnier, too, than most in its audience will be anticipating. It’s not that its comedic situations are unusual or surprising, au contraire, but rather that it finds fresh, truthful gags within them, which I won’t ruin for you here.
The show is wry, honest and you’ll feel like it cares. And when you’re likely paying a babysitter and/or cashing in some precious chips with whoever remains at home, such a delivery goes a long way.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “MotherFreakingHood!” (3.5 stars)
When: Through June 11
Where: Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Ave.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $65 at 773-360-7365 and mercurytheaterchicago.com
