Photo by Paul Porowski for Playhouse 22

(EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- Playhouse 22 presents Cry it Out, a comedy about the modern complexities and challenges of motherhood in today's world, weekends from March 6-15, 2026. This play by Molly Smith Metzler explores the lives of three mothers navigating the uncertainties of being a parent while living in suburban Long Island. It delves into themes of friendship, social class, the pressure to "have it all," and the realities of balancing work and family life.

Four months ago, Jessie was a corporate lawyer with a glamorous Manhattan life. Today, she is in dirty yoga pants, covered in breast milk, trying to comfort a screaming newborn. Isolated in a sleepy Long Island suburb while her commuter husband works long hours, Jessie is desperate to talk to anyone besides Food Network. So when she spies a fellow new mom and neighbor, Lina, at the local Stop & Shop, she vaults over the cantaloupe to introduce herself. Happy to have found each other, the two moms agree to meet for coffee during naptime in the sweet spot behind their adjoining yards where both their baby monitors get reception, and a fast friendship is born.

Jessie and Lina may be from vastly different financial backgrounds—Jessie is Ivy-educated and of the manor born; Lina has a night-school nursing degree and terrible credit—but they have one huge thing in common: they’ve been cracked open by the love they feel for their newborns. One coffee quickly becomes a daily coffee, as Jessie and Lina laugh through the highs and lows of motherhood. But their intimacy is punctured when a stranger who lives in the mansion up on the cliff appears in the yard, asking if they would include his wife, a new mom who is having “a hard time,” in their coffee klatch.

Photo by Paul Porowski for Playhouse 22

Playhouse 22's production is directed by Jennifer Greenberg. The cast includes Susie Bischoff (Lina), Heather Welsh (Jessie), Chantel Amissah (Adrienne), and Nicholas Anderson (Mitchell). 

The show runs March 6-15, 2026 with performances on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00pm; and Sunday matinees at 2:00pm. All general admission, non-assigned tickets are $20 and are available on the theater's website at Playhouse22.org or by calling the Box Office at (732) 254-3939. The theater is located at the Elliott Taubenslag Theater at the East Brunswick Community Arts Center (721 Cranbury Road) in East Brunswick, New Jersey.  

Cry it Out is part of Playhouse 22's "On the Edge" black box series focused on smaller, little-known plays. The traditional stage is transformed into a new theatrical experience with the audience sitting on stage, close to the action unlike anything you have ever seen before at the theater.

Molly Smith Metzler is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter from Kingston, N.Y. She is the creator and showrunner of the limited series Maid, which debuted on Netflix in October 2021 and spent 13 weeks on the top-10 list, viewed by more than 67 million households. In March 2022, Maid won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Outstanding Writing of a Limited Series–Adapted Long Form, and was named a “TV Program of the Year” by the AFI (American Film Institute). It also received award nominations from The Golden Globes, SAG, the Critics’ Choice Awards, NAACP, and more. Metzler’s TV credits include several seasons of Shameless (Showtime), Casual (Hulu) and Orange Is the New Black (Netflix). In film, she’s written features for Universal, Disney and Fox 2000.

Photo by Paul Porowski for Playhouse 22

As a playwright, Metzler’s plays, including Cry it Out, Elemeno Pea, The May Queen, Carve, Close Up Space and Training Wisteria, have been produced at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), Humana Festival/Actors Theatre of Louisville, South Coast Repertory, Northlight Theatre, Studio Theatre (DC), Detroit Public Theatre, City Theatre (Pittsburg), Geva Theatre Center, Chautauqua Theater Company and many more. Her play Cry it Out won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Playwriting (2018) and the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citation (2018). Her other awards include the Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, the David Mark Cohen Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. Metzler is a proud alumna of SUNY Geneseo, Boston University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Juilliard School, where she was a two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center.

Playhouse 22 is East Brunswick's award-winning and critically-acclaimed non-profit community theater troupe since 1958.  Driven and run by all volunteers, Playhouse 22 produces and stages four mainstage and three black-box shows as well as an annual holiday show every season.

Photo by Paul Porowski for Playhouse 22