Rachel Cairns in Hypothetical Baby | Photo by Dahlia Katz
A defining structural aspect of Rachel Cairns’ sprawling memoir-info dump account—of her pregnancy and its termination—is a hiccuping style that keeps sending her further and further back to suss out the true beginning. Hypothetical Baby, written and performed by Cairns, presented by Nightwood Theatre and The Howland Company, officially opens in a doctor’s office. Why is she there? Well, it’s not the right time—a whole can of worms she’ll bust open for us later—so she wants to nip this situation in the bud. The doctor, though, has a whole bunch of intrusive questions. He wants to unpack her whole deal right there, instead of pointing her in the direction of resources for what she wants—an abortion.
She does get it, eventually. Much of the show deals with all the complications—financial, social, psychological—of that journey, leading in and then out towards the rest of her life. There’s her mother. And a boyfriend. A dubious acting career and a job shining shoes in Toronto’s financial hub. Cultural pressures and existential angst abound, swirling dementedly around her hormonal, fraught psyche. Capitalism rears its ugly head too, like the pervasive villain it is.
Cairns is entirely persuasive in this unguarded mode, balancing the silly and poignant elements with a disarming naturalism. Together with director Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, she’s developed a theatrical jumping in and out of her story—engaging with us as both a character and the controlling artist.
The design elements bolster this duality. Julia Howman’s set is a raised platform backed by a bare wall with wainscoting, a rug and a chair. Cairns hops on and off as she re-enacts her history, editorializing along the way. The expressive quality of Howman’s light shifts as Cairns traverses temporal and emotional spaces. The back wall provides a canvas for projected Google searches, articles and a series of handwritten title cards that ground us. And Cosette “Ettie” Pin’s soundscape gives auditory weight to these visuals.
There is a hilariously relatable, panic attack crescendo of sound and image as her mounting fears, and the subsequent doomscrolling, lead Cairns and her invested audience down a rabbit hole of factoids and tangents, sending us all spiralling together through the relentless, oppressive details of an untenable modern existence.
A lot of the facts and figures she rattles off are hard to absorb, let alone process, but that’s not the intention anyway. They prod our awareness that reproductive rights are inextricably linked to a vast causal network of societal problems—from the high cost of living to climate change.
Cairns is, perhaps, a little too ambitious with this piece. The COVID tangent, in particular, lost me a bit. This isn’t an efficient exposé and the stats and data have impact only as an abstraction. I’m here to see her curled up on the floor, writhing in agony as the abortion pills wreak havoc on her body. I’m here for her silly little “abortion present” and the very real need this request represents. I’m here for her discovery of her mother’s history and her own place in the trajectory of women in the world.
And I got all of that. I just wish she’d curtail the hyper-contextualizing. Overall though, Cairns’ achievement is significant. Hypothetical Baby is deeply thoughtful, compelling and fun.
Hypothetical Baby
running February 22 to March 8, 2025
Factory Theatre, Mainspace (125 Bathurst St.)
running time: 90 minutes
Rachel Cairns in Hypothetical Baby | Photo by Dahlia Katz