After seeing Taboos, Stanford chemistry professor/playwright Carl Djerassi’s play on the complications of modern parenthood, you can see how some are naturally inclined to accept only the nuclear family. Forget about believing in God’s will; imagine having to deal with twins borne to two mothers, a lesbian couple picking sides over who’s the mother of what child, a father who’s an uncle to his biological son, and an entire series of other family situations that would take the play’s full two hours just to unpack.
The traditional mother/father/child dynamic, while still the plurality of American families, is not as standard as it once was, and probably never will be again. But we’ve known about this phenomenon since at least the late 80s/early 90s. What we need is a compelling drama to navigate it. I have no doubt we will eventually get one, and Taboos gives it a fair shot. Yet Djerassi has fallen into the trap of having his construction of a complicated scenario take precedent over constructing a compelling drama.
Djerassi, a Austrian Jewish refugee who fled with his parents after the Anschluss, has lived an exceedingly complicated life. After inventing of the birth control pill and acquiring a fortune with his research company Syntex, Djerassi increasingly turned to playwriting later in his life. He also had to deal with his daughter’s suicide in 1978 at the age of 28, six months after she had voluntarily sterilized herself. Awarded the National Medal of Science by Richard Nixon while simultaneously on Nixon’s Enemies List, Djerassi has a unique perspective on the intersections of science, politics, social and cultural customs, and theater. There are few men who would be more qualified to write Taboos.
But there is a conflict in Djerassi’s writing between two intended audiences, academic and theatrical, and this ultimately tarnishes Taboos. One can get a premonition of this problem reading the turgid prose and run-on sentences of his program note. Djerassi's skill at drama is clear in the opening scene, where future lesbian partners Sally (Julie Leedes) and Harriet (Helen Merino) meet for the first time. Djerassi shows a natural playwright’s sensibilities for dialogue, social dynamics, and constructing a scene. It’s when the play takes on the issues of Djerassi's other life that he loses most of his playwright's instinct. The scientist in him takes over what is essentially a family drama, which results in a lot of neutral, descriptive, and unbelievable dialogue that ultimately prevents Taboos from feeling like a lively play. Instead, it ends up more like a diagram of a legally fascinating but dramatically flat scenario.
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