Xhloe Rice (left) plays Dottie and Natasha Roland is Shirley in the queer absurdist comedy What If They Ate the Baby?, a social critique of the often suffocating lives of American suburban housewives in the 1950s. Photograph by Molly White. Banner photograph by Angelo Sagnelli.
In the U.S. premiere of What If They Ate the Baby? writer-performers Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland spin a seemingly polite 1950s housewife visit into a hilariously sinister dance of casseroles, secrets, and suburban dread. This queer clown two-hander uses absurdist comedy to probe surveillance, paranoia, and the pressures of American womanhood.
Rice and Roland are a New York–based multidisciplinary duo who have spent more than a decade developing their signature brand of absurdist, clown-inflected physical theater. They made history at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2024 as three-time consecutive recipients of the Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Writing. Those triumphs may have put them on the map, but it’s their dynamic artistry—and consistently arresting performances on both sides of the Atlantic—that keep them in the spotlight.
Rice plays Dottie, the more aggressive housewife, in Rice and Roland’s surreal two-hander, What If They Ate the Baby? Photograph by Morgan McDowell.
Much in the vein of Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, What If They Ate the Baby? gleefully dismantles traditional narrative structure, using looping, illogical exchanges to evoke a world where communication has collapsed. The play opens on Shirley (Roland) scrubbing her immaculate 1950s kitchen floor in a sunny yellow dress and rubber gloves—an image of domestic perfection already marred by mysterious green stains. Footsteps overhead and a sudden knock at the door hint at buried secrets lurking beneath the spotless surfaces.
Then, in one of the production’s most startling early bits, a pair of hands reaches out from beneath the kitchen table to grab at Shirley—groping, teasing, and finally revealing Dottie (Rice), masked and mischievous, who flirts, tussles, and asserts herself with unnerving force before vanishing and reappearing moments later at the front door—cheerfully, casserole in hand, mask gone. The tension in these scenes is palpable. While the play never explicitly references McCarthy-era paranoia or the post–Roe v. Wade climate of reproductive anxiety, both hover as atmospheric shadings in the background.
Rice and Roland’s synchronized physical comedy and crackerjack timing give them an almost animatronic precision, transforming these 1950s housewives into puppet-like figures shaped—and warped—by the repressive laws and patriarchal attitudes that govern their world.
The skeletal conversations Shirley and Dottie trade in Scene 1—highly stylized and deliberately fragmented—recur in altered forms across the play’s nine sections, creating a surreal echo chamber of shifting meanings. As the women chat about husbands, housekeeping, and culinary triumphs, emotional tension simmers beneath their sugar-coated pleasantries. Each saccharine exchange hints at truths they’re determined to keep buried.
Shirley: Oh! Dottie, what a … surprise.
Dottie: Oh … hi Shirley! How are you doing?
Shirley: I’m just lovely, and yourself?
Dottie: Oh lovely, I’m well.
Mystery abounds in this brisk, 65-minute piece. Shirley mentions that she and her husband, Walt, wish to “express their condolences” to Dottie and her husband, Henry, and the pair gossip about a neighbor who brazenly displays modern art in her vestibule and was recently questioned by the police.
The show gains more bite—literally and figuratively—when Dottie introduces the notion of cannibalism by asking, “If you could eat one part of me, what part would you eat?” When Shirley reacts in disbelief, Dottie breezily calls the question “theoretical,” then adds that she herself would begin with Shirley’s tongue “because she already knows everything you have to say.”
Despite the grisly title, neither woman speaks of an actual baby, nor is any neighborhood infanticide invoked. Instead, the play invites the audience to imagine what might fester behind closed doors in this supposedly proper American suburb.
If the dialogue occasionally underplays its wordplay—particularly in Scene 4, when the pun on Shirley’s name could go further—the performers themselves bridge the gap. When Dottie arrives with two train tickets nestled in a casserole dish, urging Shirley to escape their stultifying suburban routines, the exchange unfolds:
Rice and Roland, playwrights and co-directors, also star in What If They Ate the Baby? at the SoHo Playhouse. Photograph by Molly White.
Shirley: Surely, I can’t go with you—
Dottie: Don’t call me Shirley. I mean—I meant to say—
Shirley: I can’t go with you, Dottie.
Even when a line lands flat, Rice and Roland’s chemistry is electric, and their rapport makes them utterly mesmerizing to watch.
What If They Ate the Baby? ultimately succeeds not through shock but through the uncanny precision of its performers, who turn a suburban kitchen into a pressure cooker of fear, desire, and unspoken rebellion. In Rice and Roland’s deft hands, the absurd becomes a mirror—reflecting a world where politeness masks danger, and even the sweetest smile might hide a bite.
What If They Ate the Baby? plays through Dec. 22 at SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam St.). Evening performances are at 5 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday. There is no performance on Nov. 2, but there is an additional performance on Dec. 22. For tickets and more information, visit sohoplayhouse.com.
Playwright, Director, Scenic, Sound & Costume Design: Xhloe Rice & Natasha Roland
Lighting Design: Angelo Sagnelli
