Review: "Coney Island Nursery Rhyme" Will Do the Opposite of Lull You to Sleep

Coney Island Nursery Rhyme

Written and directed by Lubomir Rzepka

Presented at the NuBox Theatre

754 9th Ave, 4th floor, Manhattan, NYC

July 12-20th, 2024

 Judge Boothby, Mike Timoney, Jessica Noboa, & Phyllis Lindy. Photo by Valerie Terranova
A close relation belonging to one of these reviewers had to be placed in an incubator as a premature infant in the 1950s. How many of us realize that we could draw a straight line between that relative being alive today and a Coney Island sideshow? Inspired in part by reading Dawn Raffel's book The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, playwright and director Lubomir Rzepka created Coney Island Nursery Rhyme, which spotlights a fascinating, lesser-known story from medical history. The directorial debut from Rzepka–who also fronts the band Bleak March–and his first written work to be produced on the stage, the compelling Coney Island Nursery Rhyme takes audiences to a time when preemies were written off by many, including in the medical establishment, as lost causes and the work with incubators of a man now seen as the "unofficial father of Neonatology" was dismissed as quackery and relegated to a literal–and lifesaving–carnival attraction.
Mike Timoney and Zachary Speigel. Photo by Valerie Terranova
Set in the 1930s, Coney Island Nursery Rhyme presents itself as a tale, or, at least partly, a confession, related in hindsight to some patrons of a Chicago bar (a role played by the audience) by Raymond Abbot (Zachary Speigel), who describes himself as on the run from New York and, like other characters throughout the play, beginning a new life. The reason for Raymond's current situation involves a friend of his named Beatrice Winthrop (Jessica Noboa). Beatrice is of a higher social class than Raymond, although there is the implication of an attraction on his part and perhaps of some fear on the part of her often high-handed mother, Candace Lahey (Phyllis Lindy), that the interest might be reciprocated. Beatrice's wealth, though, does not provide her with much additional advantage when she gives birth prematurely after an injuriously difficult labor and delivery. Mrs. Lahey, in the spirit of the times–including a strong consideration of her daughter's prospects–feels that nature should basically be allowed to take its course with the child, and the best that Beatrice's attending physician, Dr. Charon Fielding (Judge Boothby), can offer is to bundle the infant off to a hospital in far-away Chicago from their current location in New Haven in the hopes of a slightly better chance of survival. Raymond, however, wants Beatrice to see another friend of his, Martin A. Couney (Mike Timoney), although he encourages Martin to leave out anything about incubators or Coney Island (Couney also historically had an incubator exhibit for decades in Atlantic City as well)–or about his current name and title of "Dr." both having been assumed. Mrs. Lahey is strongly against consulting with Couney, and after he visits Beatrice, what happens there leaves Raymond to take action that, while focused on moral ends, has some consequences that include bringing Couney under the scrutiny of Lt. Peter Petrovick (Pete Marzilli), who had been investigating the murder of Beatrice's husband (and pursuing his own ambiguously requited attraction).
Phyllis Lindy and Pete Marzilli. Photo by Valerie Terranova
The play of course engages with the harm that can come from the inertia of the status quo and those invested in maintaining its–and so their–authority. It is notable that Couney's innovations and those who take advantage of them are mostly associated with the lower classes, and the show's category of "lost causes" extends beyond the premature infants with whom Couney works outside of the medical industry to save. Couney himself is an immigrant with some fraudulent papers, and Lt. Peter Petrovick's contrast between his having changed his ethnic name as taking control and similar changes by actors in Hollywood as hiding prompts the audience to consider our denigration of immigrants, no matter their social contributions, who become part of the United States the "wrong" way and the common insistence that they should have "followed the rules." The foregrounding of immigrant backgrounds fruitfully dovetails with the motif of starting over, of individuals considering and reconsidering their own futures and those of their loved ones. While some of these new starts may be or seem isolating, one character posits that if we may be unable to avoid loneliness and suffering, at least we can be together, and even help each other.
Jessica Noboa, Phyllis Lindy, and Zachary Speigel. Photo by Valerie Terranova
The individual characters lend an admirable complexity to these thematic concerns. Dr. Fielding, for instance, despite being on the wrong side of history and of Baby Winthrop's needs, is played sympathetically by Boothby, even if the assertive Beatrice directs some barbs his way that are worthy of her Shakespearean namesake. To point to a second example, it emerges that Mrs. Lahey is influenced in her reactions to the baby's care by having been a carer during her husband's slow death, while Raymond's actions in the same arena are influenced by his own mother's death. Strong performances, on an effectively minimalist set with snatches of jazz for atmosphere, only enhance such characterological depth. Marzilli imbues the Lieutenant with an oblivious paternalism, while Timoney gives Couney an even-keeled rectitude (and his delivery of the phrase "my bad" early on is funny, if anachronistic), and Lindy artfully peels back the layers of Mrs. Lahey's intransigence. Speigel's Raymond can swing from sober self-reflection to an overflow of nervous energy, as if he can't stop his words spilling out, while Noboa's Beatrice evinces keen wit and dogged determination even as men keep telling her to stay in bed or go back home. After highlighting some of its big questions–What qualifies as mercy? As cruelty? When is forgiveness not just appropriate but possible?–Coney Island Nursery Rhyme leaves us in a suspended moment of near, of potential contact: one last emblem, perhaps, of a future yet to be defined.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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