REVIEW: Elephant in the Womb, with Black Cat Theatre.

"The word of the day is becoming."
Bellowed to us like we're the audience of some otherworldly TV show, a chorus of contorting "creatures" writhe across the stage and consistently insert dread into an otherwise jovial atmosphere, reminding us that our time is limited, a deadline draws near, and perfection is all but expected when she arrives. What is an unborn, loudmouth clown living inside a cavernous womb supposed to do under such dire circumstances? If you're PeeWee (a rip-roaring Madison Hill), you practice, practice, and practice some more, hoping and praying to all that's holy that this will finally be the moment when everything clicks into place.

And so we have the world premiere of Katy Smith's Elephant in the Womb, directed by Sara Benbella and Jared Sheldon, delivering Black Cat Theatre's latest mainstage production to life onstage at Theater Wit. I was quite enamored with Black Cat's 2025 mainstage show, Quinlyn Can Paint, a very different show about a very different kind of artist struggling to meet their particular skewed expectations of creative success. With this latest production, I'm thrilled to see that this young company, barely three years old, is consistently willing to invest in new forms of playwriting and is striving to make art that feels both strange and alive. What they sometimes lack in polish and finesse, they more than make up for in gumption and passion, and Elephant in the Womb, for good and for ill, is as raw and bizarre and singular as anything you'll see onstage this year in Chicago.

If Jane Schoenbrun directed an episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, you might get something approximating this wonderfully outré piece of sincere, surreal clowning following an unborn entertainer, the aforementioned PeeWee, trying to perfect their attempted masterpiece of an act before they're due to be born. They're constantly interrupted by a dizzying array of interlopers, seemingly entering the womb from nowhere but the imagination of the playwright. We get a precocious young girl playing at recess (a wonderfully committed Amanda Elena de la Fuente), an old, guitar-playing poet coming to peace with his own mortality (a wistful Tris Miller), and a tech employee facing a crisis of personal identity (an altogether charming Lizzy Mosher) who ultimately forms an intimate bond with our bold and brash clown. These travelers aim to give PeeWee some sense of what life is, or can be, which is nothing less than an altogether tangled mess of distress and beauty. Lord knows if that's what PeeWee is really after, though.

In their vast theatrical arena (scenic designer Nicholas J. Taboni brilliantly delivers on the promise of whatever the hell "a big-top tent but inside a uterus" might look like), PeeWee doesn't so much break the fourth wall as much as they cartwheel into it, tear it limb from limb, and use the remnants as their own toilet paper. Decked out in vibrant black-and-red harlequin attire (costumes are by Kasey Wolfgang), Hill's character is presented here as a horny, twisted amalgam of Jim Carrey, Tom Green, Paul Reubens, and Sarah Sherman, yet their work thankfully never feels derivative or forced. They're tasked with balancing gleeful absurdity with tragic yearning and they manage that all with gusto throughout a show where they practically never leave the stage.

Smith's script is undeniably sharp and well-crafted, though there are perhaps too many strands of spaghetti that have been thrown at the wall, this tight-knit patchwork of existential mania struggling to keep all of its plates spinning across the two hour-plus, two-act runtime (I can only imagine the actors are thrilled to have a break from the breakneck pace, but the intermission is something of a momentum killer in a show that yearns to keep its foot on the pedal). But what is there shines through marvelously; Smith's dialogue is at once lyrical and profane, oscillating between crude humor and poetic waxing and straight-up horror while all feeling of the same universe, aided in this production by an ensemble of performers unafraid to turn goofy, earnest, or manic on a dime.

And then of course there's Julian "Joolz" Stroop, entering late into the proceedings as Mother, finally answering the question of what it would look like if Divine played the role of Mama Rose. Stroop gives us an act of domestic housewife drag that is equally nightmarish and Camp, their work adding deeper layers to the universe of Smith's text, while also finding a strange and delightful vessel to explore Elephant in the Womb's fascinating relationship with the act of criticism itself. I'll admit, it feels almost like a dare trying to write about this show, a play built upon the idea that the act of even "trying" to make art - or to just Be in general - is noble in itself, and that attempts to critique said art could be construed as antithetical to the artistic process altogether. What good are the words of a critic in the face of a show saying, in so few words "to hell with the critics!"?

Believe it or not, then, I do emphasize with PeeWee, a brilliant and tragic character who goes to great, powerful lengths to show us what it literally means to bare your soul to someone else when sharing your art with them. Their journey rests on the belief that their failure to achieve artistic perfection will render them an eternal waste of space, and that emerging into the world anything less than a fully formed artistic triumph is setting themselves up for a miserable existence. If I may, then, offer some plain truth to PeeWee, in the form of some critique that maybe they'll listen to with an open heart;
I don't think you're perfect. I think your show lags too often, and certain scenes are far too repetitive as the night goes on, and I really think you should find a way to cut that intermission of yours, however that may happen in subsequent productions. So no, you're not perfect, but I think you're better than perfect; you're you. Unabashedly, heroically, ridiculously you. I think you've got talent and moxie and heart which is a hell of a lot more than I could say for some more "perfect" shows I've seen in this city. So I think you should walk through that door back there and let us get a good look at you. I think there are a lot of people who'll be thrilled to meet you, and to see what you can become.

Black Cat Theatre runs an estimated 2 hours, including a 10-minute intermission, and performs at Theater Wit (1229 W. Belmont) through September 13th 2026. Tickets are available HERE.

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