MacMillan's "Lungs' at Luna Theater

How times have changed. A few decades ago, men were banished to the waiting room while their wives gave birth. Now, as in Duncan MacMillan's Lungs, the prospective father insists on joining his wife in the bathroom while the might-be mama takes her home pregnancy test.

That's not the only contemporary twist. Lungs features two 20-somethings (Charlotte Ford as "W" and David Raphaely as "M"), who congratulate themselves because they "read books about actual things" and "watch subtitled films" while they wrestle with the ultimate quandary: Should we "make another person"?

As a young wife confronting that very question, I found much in Lungs that seemed aimed squarely at my husband and me (See "Confessions of a female draft-dodger.") But the question of whether this couple should get married comes long after they raise the question of parenthood.

I can feel the Heritage Foundation shuddering from here.

Tree huggers

W and M are the kind of people whose self-absorption manifests in constant lip-service to unselfish causes rather than practical action: references to tree-planting, carbon credits and other shorthands for environmental responsibility pepper the dialogue more than real-life questions of parenting or schooling.

"We're good people, right?" they ask themselves again and again, as the question of making a new life becomes primarily an opportunity to define and affirm their own selves.

Much of MacMillan's banter rings true. "It's like you punched me in the face and then asked me to do a math problem," W says when M first broaches the issue of children.

"You're right, so shut up," she snaps during a later argument.

When M wonders if they can "comprehend the enormity" of actually raising a child, it's not clear if he means to refer to the magnitude of the task or the horrible possibilities of parenting gone awry.

Spooky coincidences

Many things about Lungs will hit home for young couples whose friends seem to be announcing pregnancies every month. For my husband and me, the coincidences bordered on spooky"“ the gray sweatshirt that Raphaely wears onstage was the same one my husband wore to the show, and when the couple contemplates a name for a little boy, it's none other than my husband's own first name.

MacMillan's intentionally stripped-down play is faithfully staged, without props or a set. But Gregory Scott Campbell's articulate direction nevertheless delivers a sense of realism, as when W and M mime affectionately fitting two people's elbows and knees into one narrow bathtub. In another scene, a sleepy bedtime confessional finds the couple not lying down but doing a tender slow-dance.

Often, Campbell creates a literal gulf out of the couple's disagreements: When they're emotionally opposed, M and W retreat to shout at each other from opposite corners of the "theater-in-the-square" stage.

Weight of history

After a solid hour of their rapid-fire yet circuitous discussions, I began to wish they'd change the subject, as I sometimes feel with friends who dwell endlessly on the angst of their defunct relationships.

But MacMillan does emphasize a fundamental truth of the childbearing decision, as M and W unspool every conceivable worry of a lifetime of parenting— as well as the weight of "seven and a half thousand generations of human history."

Bringing a child into the world does force self-centered people to take a larger worldview— a better appreciation for human history, and a whole new concept of the future. But as M and W demonstrate, itemizing every aspect of this phenomenon as soon as you contemplate pregnancy achieves nothing but panicked paralysis.

"We're not gonna over-think this, we're gonna do it," M declares near the end of Lungs. Ultimately, the play seems to say that pregnancy"“ the ultimate in planning for the future"“ shouldn't happen until we can live in the moment.