Hearing the audience roar with laughter at The MOMologues on the evening I saw the performance, you might have thought that the play must be brilliantly witty. But you’d be wrong: What the (mostly) women watching this Stageworks show were clearly laughing at was the accuracy of its many descriptions of the motherhood experience, from the absurdity of fertility treatments to the shock of bearing twins.

Again and again, in this earnest, honest but not very inventive show, the four women on stage recall some typical mother-moment — say, judging strangers at playgrounds, or tricking a garrulous child into shutting its trap — and the grateful audience explodes, as if finally someone is admitting that the Hallmark card version of mothering isn’t the only story.

As the father of a small son, I too recognized maybe 20 relevant moments out of the 200 or so that The MOMologues presents, but I didn’t want to shout when I heard them; I just thought, well, how about that, so my experience is not so unique. But I seemed to be in the minority; the audience I saw the play with lustily cheered each recognizable milestone as if the cat were finally, blessedly out of the bag.

This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2011.