The Baby Dance attacks the class divide in creative, but fairly unsubtle ways. Whenever money enters the conversation, pleasant chatter turns passive aggressive and occasionally escalates further. Laura Dern, as a poor pregnant woman offering her child for adoption, is the standout here. Stockard Channing holds her own against her, at her best delivering a monologue about a miscarriage she had in a public restroom. Jane Anderson has a way of getting to the core of her characters in such moments, writing dialogue that show guarded characters at their most sorrowful or desperate. The last act is almost too bleak to be bearable or believable.
