Sarena Parmar in The Surrogate.Kendra Epik/Supplied
- Title: The Surrogate
- Written by: Mohsin Zaidi
- Director: Christopher Manousos
- Actors: Fuad Ahmed, Thom Nyhuus, Sarena Parmar, Antonette Rudder, Siddarth Sharma
- Company: Here For Now Theatre, in association with Crow’s Theatre, House and Body and b current Performing Arts
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to March 29
Critic’s Pick
Last September, techno-culture magazine Wired published an article titled, “The Baby Died. Whose Fault Is It?” Equal parts harrowing and infuriating, the feature – which soon went viral – captured the surrogacy industry’s more sinister sides, exploring what happens when an arrangement between wealthy, powerful parents and an unrelated woman’s womb turns sour.
The Surrogate – astonishingly, British lawyer Mohsin Zaidi’s first play – further twists the knife into a business riddled with spikes. It’s no less provocative than that Wired piece, and, in fact, owing to the immediacy of director Christopher Manousos’s intimate staging, it packs an even more grotesque wallop.
Of course, at its best, surrogacy is beautiful, a transaction that embodies the best of human generosity and love. Indeed, when we first meet soon-to-be parents, Canadian yuppies Sameer and Jake (Fuad Ahmed and Thom Nyhuus, both outstanding), there’s no reason to believe their arrangement with surrogate Marya (Sarena Parmar) has been anything but smooth sailing. Marya completed the necessary psychological evaluations, we learn; Sameer and Jake are monied and ambitious, willing to cover Marya’s expenses and then some as she carries their unborn child to term.
Thom Nyhuus and Fuad Ahmed in The Surrogate.Kendra Epik/Supplied
But the promise of a new baby is emotionally taxing at the best of times, beyond picking out names or deciding the perfect shade of custard-yellow for the nursery. It’s tougher when the child’s parents are queer, or, in Sameer’s case, when they possess a litigious, hair-trigger temper that flares up at the first sign of conflict. It’s harder still when, in an explosion of lies, heartache and fluorescent-lit anguish (the production’s punchy lighting design is by Chris Malkowski), the surrogate expresses doubts about giving up the baby – even when there’s no genetic link between her and the child.
Even worse, Marya has – for some reason – travelled from her home state of Texas to Louisiana, where paid surrogacy is illegal, and where any documents pertaining to such an arrangement are, in effect, null and void.
Following on his terrific Measure for Measure in Crow’s teeny studio space last year, Manousos offers a brisk, brave staging of a play that occasionally wobbles into melodrama – at times, it feels as if a few of Zaidi’s lines anticipate applause or even a commercial break.
But under Manousos’s confident hand, and on Scott Penner’s mirrored set, which sculpts the venue into an overwhelming, carnivalesque hospital room, the whole thing sings. At its best, it almost feels like a bonus episode of The Pitt, laser-focused on the intersection between the United States’ broken medical system and the social issues that pock everyday life with prejudice and distrust. (And Pitt fans, rejoice: Intubation makes an appearance in the play.)
It’s worth noting earlier drafts of The Surrogate were titled American Baby – a misnomer, maybe, but one that would have broadcasted the anti-American sentiment baked into Zaidi’s powerful, evocative script. One need not look hard in the play for jabs at the country’s ludicrously expensive health-care system, or the sociocultural landmines that exist in the deep south for members of the country’s queer communities. (The former title raises the question, as well: Would Jake and Sameer’s baby be Canadian, like their dads? American? Something else? Another thorn in the rosebush of unconventional paths to parenthood, especially in Canada, where surrogacy is legal, but compensation for it is not.)
Antonette Rudder and Sarena Parmar in The Surrogate.Kendra Epik/Supplied
What’s perhaps most impressive about Zaidi’s writing is its willingness to cut deep: It doesn’t scratch the surface of surrogacy, and instead hacks the practice open with a poison-tipped machete. In plenty of ways, Jake and Sameer are awful people, yet they’re also the victims of bigotry – arguably, even hate crimes – as soon as they walk through the door of the hospital. Marya’s been through hell and back in the months leading up to the events of The Surrogate, yet the choices she makes in the play are close to indefensible; the same’s true of her son Qasim (Siddharth Sharma).
Nurse Christina (an excellent Antonette Rudder) similarly holds dual selves under the umbrella of her job as an overworked labour and delivery nurse, but the character feels like a composite of several hospital workers at once – The Surrogate sags most when Zaidi stretches Christina too thin.
Even so, Ahmed and Nyhuus’s performances are among the best of the year so far, ugly and vulnerable and extraordinarily well-considered. Just when the audience starts to sympathize with Jake and Sameer, Nyhuus and Ahmed change course, further injecting the play with acerbic wit. (The final beats of the play, in particular, are disgusting and painful, anchored by Ahmed’s willingness to explore the darkest depths of Sameer’s bruised soul: You might find yourself feeling in need of a shower by the time the house lights turn back on.)
Much like The Pitt, The Surrogate isn’t without its foibles – it’s unsubtle in its politics and occasionally far-fetched in its compressed, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pacing. But the play offers a piercing, meditative look behind the curtain of an industry shrouded in stigma, where the real villain isn’t a person at all: It’s an American society unwilling to look after its neediest citizens, and a health-care system unable to supply the ingredient most crucial to starting a family – love.