'And Baby Makes Seven' puts all the pieces together in dramatic fashion

Ever since playwright Paula Vogel won the Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive in 1998, her plays have been widely performed by regional theater companies looking for stylistically daring works that have the Pulitzer's seal of approval.

Now Jobsite Theater is staging Vogel's 1984 play And Baby Makes Seven, which is about a lesbian couple, the gay father of their unborn child and three imaginary children.

Critic Mel Gussow, in his New York Times review, said, "The author has fashioned a play as if it were a Legoland, interlocking spare parts from children's literature and from adult literature and films about children, drawing freely from, among other sources, The Red Balloon, Peter Pan, The Exorcist and, especially, The Bad Seed."

Pictured here, from left, David M. Jenkins, Alison Burns and Jessica Rothert star in the Jobsite production, directed by Karla Hartley. It opens today and runs through Oct. 11 in the Shimberg Playhouse of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. $24.50. (813) 229-7827; tbpac.org.

John Fleming, Times performing arts critic