Co-stars Becki Toth and Allan Snyder Dish on Front Porch Theatricals’ First Production of 2025

By SHARON EBERSON

When the musical Baby opened on Broadway in 1983, Frank Rich of The New York Times said it belonged in the rare realm of shows that “inspired you to the record store as soon as the original cast album came out,” so taken was he with the music.

He was prescient in that respect – the song “The Story Goes On,” for example, is a staple of college programs and auditions. So, too, does the story of Baby go on. The show made a short-lived comeback in 2021, with updates to its three couples in various stages of life, pregnancies and uncertainties.

That version, by lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. is the Baby that arrives at the New Hazlett Theater, May 16-25, 2025. 

Kristiann Menotiades follows a Front Porch tradition of first-time directors who have long resumés in Pittsburgh theater, with maestro Deana Muro as music director.

The two-show summer-season features two Tony Award-nominees of 1984: Baby, followed by Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George. Both shows lost that year to La Cage Aux Folles.

Baby, (original book by Sybille Pearson, music by David Shire, and lyrics by Maltby), follows three couples on a university campus – a 40-something couple (Becki Toth and Allan Snyder) with grown children, dealing with an unexpected pregnancy; a lesbian couple (Lindsay Bayer Ray and Maria Bechtell), longing to be parents and going through IVF; and collegians (Saige Smith and Braden Stroppel) finding themselves facing parenthood just when they are ready to launch. 

Toth and Snyder, both veterans of Front Porch and musicals throughout the Pittsburgh region, were co-stars in Front Porch’s A Man of No Importance.

During a recent Zoom interview, the pair bantered about their characters, and working together. 

“We didn’t get a lot of bonding time, but obviously we got pretty close during Man of No Importance, playing brother and sister, and with how emotional that story is. It was really special to me. So getting to do this opposite Becki was one of the main reasons I wanted to do it, to be honest,” said Snyder. 

“I think he’s also excited to do it because the character has the same name that he has,” Toth chimed in (Allan plays Alan opposite Toth’s Arlene in Baby).

“I mean, yeah, that’s never happened before,” Snyder said. 

“Well, I’ve never been pregnant in a show before, which is surprising, I guess, but considering the type of actor that I am, maybe it’s not really super surprising,” Toth said. “I always play the friend or the prostitute. I don’t play the sweet little pregnant mother very often, so that’s exciting to get to explore that as well.”

I wanted to protest that she was a knockout as a concerned mother in Light in the Piazza, among other shows, but the conversation about the show at hand was on a roll. 

MORE WITH BECKI TOTH AND ALLAN SNYDER

On the subject matter of Baby …

TOTH: I don’t know that that many shows explore pregnancy. That’s one of the great things about this show, that it’s dealing with issues that so many people deal with, but aren’t really often portrayed on stage, or it’s funny, aren’t seen as high stakes, but they actually are in your personal life. 

SNYDER: I mean I think that’s really true. I think another thing that is really special about this show is that often when there’s a show about babies, it’s very singularly from the perspective of the mother, and I really think this show explores the impact that a pregnancy and potential impending parenthood has on the mother and the father. I think that’s been really exciting and interesting to kind of dig into, and not just that aspect of it, but also motherhood at any stage of life, or attempting to be a mother and going to extreme scientific means to make something like this happen. It’s exploring all of the definitions of impending parenthood from all perspectives.

On the music of Baby …

TOTH: I’m a musical theater teacher, so I have heard The Story Goes On so many times in my life, so I knew that one, and Patterns has been in my book for a long time. Actually, Patterns is the song that I used to audition for Parade for Front Porch eons ago. So it’s sort of a fun little full-circle moment to get to sing that one. So I knew those two, but really that was it for me. 

SNYDER: I think almost everybody knows the music but doesn’t really know the show that well, especially coming up in [academia] BFA in  musical theater, you cannot get away from the songs the young couples sing. When I was in college, plenty of girls I knew sang The Story Goes On. We had a musical scene, in study class at NYU, and they always did What Could Be Better? … But I didn’t know anything about our [characters’] stuff, which is nice. I feel like too often I go in, it’s easy to go in with preconceived notions. I said this to Becki the other day – it’s also nice, so often musicals are period pieces or really heightened, and it’s nice to just play a contemporary guy my age dealing with life. It almost feels more like a play than a musical in that way. 

On the different perspectives in Baby …

TOTH: I’ve talked to Saige and Lindsay … a lot about how coming into this, [none of us] have ever been pregnant. We were like, ‘Wow, this is going to feel really strange to be having to embody this,’ but the themes of this transcend the act of pregnancy. It’s very much about where to find meaning in your existence. Are you finding meaning in your own life? Are you finding meaning in moving forward? Are you finding meaning in developing who you are in this moment and blooming where you’re planted? I think all of us, all three of us have really experienced a lot of feelings of self-exploration through this, because going into it feeling like, I’m not really going to relate to this at all, then discovering, wow, this just feels really universal. It feels like emotions that everyone has that are just sort of encapsulated in this little story, but really are much broader. And I don’t think that there’s anyone of at any walk of life that won’t relate to something or some aspect of the story that we’re telling.

SNYDER: One of my big surprises, not really knowing the show when I read it, was, you hear the show’s called Baby, it’s about three couples who are pregnant or trying to be. What it really is about, though, is relationships, and what makes them work, and obviously how having a baby can affect them. But for me, ultimately I think it’s about communicating with your partner. Because to be honest, I think the major conflicts and the differences you can see between the three couples have to do with how well or how poorly they actually communicate. So I think anybody that’s been in a relationship will be able to relate to the show. 

Working with first time director Kristiann Menotiades …

TOTH: If you spend 5 minutes in a room with Kristiann, you know exactly what the room is that we’ve been working in. She is a joy bomb of a person. She just puts everything out there, and then if it’s a mistake or if it’s wrong, she’s like, ‘OK, well let’s do something else.’ As an actor, there is nothing more empowering than feeling like I can go into this and take a big swing, and whatever happens, happens,, and we’ll fix it. … I feel like I have learned so much from working with her, and not just because she’s bringing in her story of her motherhood, which she talks about a lot, but because of just the really forgiving and understanding and accepting climate. She has developed this great little ecosystem for creativity in the room.

SNYDER: I love is coming in with ideas. And again, some of them are good, some are bad. But what I have loved about this is, I really feel like me and Becki and Kristiann are a team, and we each contribute to our scenes, and it’s, it’s been wonderful. She’s awesome. I’m having a great time.

The challenges of personally playing these characters …

TOTH: I was not prepared for the vocal dexterity that this role requires. [SNYDER: She is unbelievable.] It’s incredible when you talk about ‘big sings’ in musical theater, Arlene in Baby is never mentioned, and she absolutely should be. I mean, I’ve sung incredibly difficult material in my life, and this is the apex. You’re going to hear every single note that I know how to sing in the course of this show.

So vocally, it’s incredibly demanding. But I mean personally for me, my mom passed away when I was pretty young and I didn’t have a relationship with a mother. As I’ve grown older, it’s been really challenging for me to come to terms with the person that I am, because of a lack of a maternal influence. And thinking about this character that is such a maternal influence – she has has four daughters! – this feels like such a matriarchy. It’s been emotionally really challenging for me to deal with the loss in a different way than I ever have really before. Maybe especially because it’s around Mother’s Day … and it’s just a deeply imbued mother role. I have definitely felt the absence of my mother in the course of this. …

I just turned 50 this year and my mom passed away when she was 50. So I think I’ve been feeling it in a really poignant way, growing beyond my mother. And it’s all just sort of come to a head during this show. It’s a very emotional role, but the emotions are not difficult for me to access because this has really been very close to my heart throughout the process.

SNYDER: Compared to the complexity of Arlene, Alan’s pretty simple. He’s pretty simple, he has simple desires. What’s been interesting for me personally is more or less, in the last several years since we came out of the pandemic, I have basically been a stay-at-home dad, and I’ll occasionally do shows. And then my wife started a business which is doing really well, and she is basically the provider for our family. So what’s interesting for me personally is I probably actually relate more to Arlene personally than Alan. So it’s been interesting to kind of take the other viewpoints – but he does sort of remind me of me before therapy a bit in terms of his obliviousness. 

SometimesI think that Alan and Arlene, they’re a really perfectly written duo. Arlene is such just a ball of neurons firing and emotions that are extremely close to the surface. And Alan is just Alan. Alan is the foil for that. Alan is the home, Alan is the nurturer, the neutral around extreme sensitivity. It’s important. Both of us can’t be like that. That would not be a very fun show to watch. So I have found that there are aspects of Arlene in terms of her emotional reaction to things that I relate to a lo

Tell me about your co-stars – Allan, have you talked with Braden Stroppel (Point Park University Class of 2026) …

SNYDER: The one thing that I wish, and it’s just not the way the show’s written, I literally have one scene in the show that’s not just with [Toth], and that’s Fatherhood Blues, which is a great song and we have a great time doing it. We haven’t had a ton of a chance to talk and socialize, but he’s a great kid and definitely early on in rehearsal, I remember saying to Becki, isn’t it kind of strange as you get older and you’re doing this and you see a younger performer performing and you’re like, ‘God, I feel like I’m looking at myself 25 years ago.’ Not that he’s exactly me, but something about his energy and his enthusiasm. He’s been wonderful. All the young performers, the other college performers, they’re all fantastic.

TOTH: Maria’s voice is just beautiful … and we haven’t talked about Lindsay Bayer yet, and she’s doing such incredibly beautiful, poignant work in this show. Lindsay and I’ve worked together two notable times, once in Light in the Piazza, and prior to that, we did Sweeney Todd together at Stage 62. I played Mrs. Lovett and she played Joanna. So we’ve known each other for a long time, and Lindsay’s work in this … it’s not the kind of role that Lindsay traditionally falls into, but she is just such an actor’s actor for sure. She does the work. There’s something new that she’s bringing to the table … and she sounds incredible. She’s a very grounded presence on stage, which I think is sort of the antithesis of what the show indicates –  Maria’s character is sort of the more grounded, and Lindsay’s character is the more flighty, but they’ve sort of flipped it and it just works impeccably.

SNYDER: Also, I will say in terms of the changes they made to the show … having a same sex couple is great in terms of representation, but specifically in terms of their story, IVF is such a huge thing, and I feel like there’s so many couples I know that have gone through – it some successfully, some not. ,,, It’s a sensitive issue, but I think it’s dealt with really well. And I think people who don’t know about it will learn a lot about that process and how this works, and how hard it is for people who want to get pregnant and who can’t, how hard it can be. 

TOTH: To just sort of round out the rest of the cast, if I had to give someone incentive to see this show, I would say even if you have heard The Story Goes On a million times, you have not really heard it until you have heard Saige Smith sing it. Oh my God. I have heard it a lot of times in my life sung by incredible performers. But Saige is just incredible.

SNYDER: As incredible as her voice is, it’s the acting level on top of it .. just beautiful choices. And she and Braden together are so creative and funny, you will not be able to help falling in love with both of them. 

TICKET AND DETAILS

Front Porch Theatricals’ production of Baby is at the New Hazlett Theater, North Side, May 16-25, 2025. Tickets: https://www.frontporchpgh.org/ .

Categories: Our Posts, Reviews

Tags: 2025 Season, Allan Snyder, Baby musical, Becki Toth, Front Porch Theatricals, Saige Smith