THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

What happens when a baby is born so grotesquely ill-formed as to be barely recognizable as a member of its species? For many centuries, it soon died naturally from attendant infrastructural flaws, but nowadays, we have the technology to maintain vital signs in the most severely disabled infants. This mixed blessing imposes difficult decisions on parents who must re-assess their definitions of what constitutes a viable human being. Such existential crises are irresistible to modern playwrights, because don't all babies initially emerge as alien parasites, demanding our attention and industry, while contributing nothing in compensation for the privileges they receive?

It's been proposed that the innate "cuteness" of the very young encourages us to nurture them, or maybe it's the potential we ascribe to them. Whatever the answer, Nick and Colby Stillman's child is endowed with none of these saving graces, its sole beauty residing in a single eye and the labyrinth of mechanical devices that keep its organs functioning. Daddy Nick, whose job with the census bureau predisposes him to topological distinctions, declares his offspring female, dubs her "Cassandra," and doggedly proceeds to project interactive responses on his progeny. Mommy Colby, meanwhile, fashions a cuddly-toy out of the amputated remnants of Cassie's onesies and, after a bout of serious postpartum hostility, bonds in synchronicity with the medical, uh, miracle.

There's droll fascination in a bassinet festooned, like a Christmas basket, with glowing tubes, blinking lights and cricket-chirp monitors. If Rachel Axler had made this a horror story, we could easily anticipate little Cassie's transformation into some sort of monster, or if the author's goal was to satirize the propensity of upwardly mobile couples to endow extensions of themselves with special talents, there are plenty of laughs to be mined from the statistical jargon invoked by number-crunching papa. The play could even be viewed as a family drama, with a doting Grandma Stillman and brother Pete's perfect sons exacerbating the procreative conflicts.

Ka-Tet director Allison Shoemaker and her cast struggle to provide a consistent tone on their nebulous text. Scott Allen Luke and Stevie Chaddock Lambert embrace Nick and Colby's agony as solemnly as if they were doing O'Neill, despite the annoying distraction of the twinkling robot in the room (foleyed by Dan Meisner), while Andrew Marchetti supplies threats or sympathy as the plot requires. Ultimately, our own emotional investment relies on how readily we can proffer unconditional affection to a collage of Crayola-hued hardware.