A Los Angeles Theatre Review: ‘Tiny Father’

The Geffen Playhouse production of Tiny Father is an interesting play as it boasts an impressive array of talent with the playwright Mike Lew and his frequent theatre director collaborator & Tony Award-nominated Moritz von Stuelpnagel.

The subject matter is a unique and valuable one about a man coming to terms with fatherhood as he overlooks his NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) baby and with having a complete global majority cast of Maurice Williams as the father and Tiffany Villarin as the night nurse, these are all awesome winning ingredients for me. But in the the end, the play will have its greatest responses for those who had a NICU experience. To everyone else? Overall, it’s a decent experience at the theatre.

When a “friends with benefits” relationship unexpectedly results in the early arrival of a baby girl, Daniel (Maurice Williams, The Vince Staples Show) must choose between being a biological parent or becoming a father. With the help of Caroline (Tiffany Villarin, Do You Feel Anger?), a no-nonsense night nurse, the new dad learns to navigate the protocols and frustrations of NICU life on his uncertain path to parenthood.

For just a two-hander play, the Geffen Playhouse utilized its main space in a very fancy way with incredible set design work by David Meyer and supplemented by the wonderful lighting design by Pablo Santiago. You know a theatre production is fancy when they actually installed running water on stage so we can see it being used by the actors. Yet despite its relatively brief 90-minute run time, the play could have actually shaved off 10 minutes if they didn’t need to use its rotating stage platform every time for a time-jump transition as it bogged down the production significantly with just that alone.

The actors did a decent job with Tiffany Villarin having the more challenging part of spouting off a ton of medical jargon. Yet one of the more frustrating aspects of this production is that there were no real changes in character growth between the two as the play had very little tension or dramatic build. As a slice-of-life kind of play, it succeeds? While I don’t need everything to have life or death high stakes in all works of theatre, there could have been at least more of a conflict or at least consequences, especially near the end when Daniel takes matters into his own hands by finishing off the formula to ensure his baby being released from NICU. The actors also never really connected with each other during the entire performance and a lot of jokes were lost as it was mostly sped through.

There are a lot of factors that come into focus why so much of the play was just decent, whether it be the writing, acting, or directing, but I do appreciate an Asian American playwright writing a play that got commissioned that isn’t about minority identity but rather a universal health issue (in this case, a particularly American one what with our terrible health care system) that has actors of global majority taking part. While I understand that playwrights often like to work with directors who they have a relationship with, I would have loved to see a woman of global majority given the director’s chair and how they would have handled this material.

That last train of thought actually serves as an observation for the Geffen Playhouse’s 2024-2025 season as all but one of their shows will be directed by white people. While I understand that larger theatre companies will want to work more exclusively with artists who are established and boast impressively long resumes, I know there are extraordinarily talented directors of global majority who can easily rise to the challenge and knock it out of the park. As a theatre critic of global majority, I can only wish for more diversity in this area even though the new Geffen Playhouse artistic director is Black with Tarrell Alvin McCraney.

To wrap things up, Tiny Father was a safe production with impressive set and lighting design. Once again, I appreciate works like this exist when written by playwrights of global majority but I dare the playwright and director to make bolder choices that cost something for its characters.

Tiny Father
Opening Night: June 20, 2024
Closing Night: July 14, 2024

Written by Mike Lew
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
Tiffany Villarin as Caroline
Maurice Williams as Daniel

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Monday, Tuesday No performance
Wednesday – Friday 8:00 p.m.
Saturday 3:00 and 8:00 p.m.
Sunday 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.

LOCATION
Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse
10886 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024

RUNTIME
90 minutes, no intermission

WARNINGS
Content Advisory: This production contains profanity.
Age Recommendation: 12+
All Geffen Playhouse productions are intended for an adult audience; children under 10 years of age will not be admitted. Although not required, we encourage masks for audience members for the health and well-being of our artist(s).

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets currently priced at $39.00 – $129.00. Available by phone at 310.208.2028 or online at www.geffenplayhouse.org. Fees may apply.