NPX Weekly Round-Up: Fertile Ground by Jennifer O'Grady

A surprisingly terrifying family thriller for the stage, plus three other plays I'm interested in this week!

Like a lot of women my age (mid-late twenties) I am a bit of a true crime junkie. Not in a creepy or dangerous way— I’m not going out trying to solve anybody’s murder here! —but I’m definitely a solid fan of true crime content such as And That’s Why We Drink (podcast), Bailey Sarian (Youtuber), Eleanor Neale (Youtuber, once more), and Crime Junkie (podcast). So, when a play involving true crime aspects comes up, it’s definitely going to catch my eye.

This play comes with a big content warning, so I’ll let you know right here that there are discussions of filicide (parent killing their own child), infertility, and cheating. If you don’t want to read about any of that, I suggest coming back next time when we’re discussing a different play. Take care of yourself!

This play follows two sisters, Olivia and Leigh, and Leigh’s husband, Max. Olivia is a psychologist writing a new study on maternal filicide, and Leigh is a novelist who’s been desperately trying to have a child. Olivia and her husband (who is never seen) have fraternal twins, which becomes a bit of a plot point later on.

But before I get too into it, here’s the summary from NPX:

Novelist Leigh wants a baby but struggles with unexplained miscarriages. Her younger sister Olivia, a parent and psychologist on the tenure track, is having trouble finishing her new study of maternal filicide due to one of her subjects, whose motivations are disturbingly unclear. Leigh's husband Max wants to be done with fertility treatments so that he and Leigh can move on. As Olivia and Max begin leaning on each other for support, Leigh begins writing a novel about filicide, and fact and fiction begin to collide and will have devastating consequences. A new play about motherhood, including its darker side.

Let’s dive in.

Olivia and Leigh have a typical sister relationship from what I can tell— except that they have a strange underlying fear or obsession regarding the other copying them. As someone who doesn’t have a sister, I’m unsure how “normal” this is, but I was very struck by it. This deep envy is something that really drives the play; Olivia’s envy of Leigh writing ability and relationship, and Leigh’s envy of Olivia’s ability to have children. Olivia’s study of maternal filicide permeates the whole show as well, wearing down on Olivia and, strangely, bolstering Leigh in a complex way.

There is a persistent atmosphere of dread throughout this play. One can tell that something sinister is happening below the surface, but it isn’t really revealed until the end of the play. This is one of those works where I don’t know that you could actually call any of the characters likable or even redeemable— by the end of the play they have all done absolutely atrocious things to each other. We don’t keep reading (or watching) because we like the characters. We keep reading/watching to see just how deep and twisted things are going to get. It’s like that old saying about a train wreck— it’s so awful you can’t look away.

Max, Leigh’s husband, cheats on her with Olivia fairly late into the play. This is the proverbial straw that begins to reveal just how deep the issues go between Leigh and Olivia specifically. Olivia’s husband has just left her because she “works too much” and focuses more on the kids instead of him (ew ew EW) and Max feels neglected since Leigh has become obsessed with her fiction novel on maternal filicide. This is absolutely NO reason to cheat (there never is :) ), which Leigh acknowledges and uses to commit her own pretty unforgivable/gross betrayal. Like I said, nobody in this play is likable. They are all so traumatized and unwilling to work on it, which leads to them absolutely destroying the lives of others.

What I really learned from this play is something I already know but can always use a reminder for— that your characters do not have to be good people or even likable for your play to be engaging, entertaining, and successful. But, when you don’t have characters for the audience to root for, you need to provide them with another reason to stick with the story, which in this case is the horror of “how far can/will this go?”. As someone who does tend to explore some darker themes and even horror motifs, this is something I definitely needed a reminder of.

Here is my official recommendation from NPX:

A chilling almost-thriller that shows how deep people's capacity for selfishness can go. It's incredibly complex, but also doesn't excuse any of the character's awful actions. I felt on the edge of my seat as I read, wondering just how far the characters would go to either get what they wanted or deal (very poorly) with their circumstances. A brilliant play that I also think would work very well as a film!

Have you read this play? Let me know what YOU think about it by replying to this email or messaging me on the StubStack app!

Here are three more plays that excited me this week:

• Don’t Touch the Carrot Cake by Emily McClain

• Julie by Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin

• Medusa, Modern Woman by Lizzy Santana

Want me to read one of these plays? Want me to read YOURS? Let me know by replying to this email or messaging me on the SubStack app!

Happy reading!

~Brynn