Your reviewing powers are of no use here

Lyle Lanley: Y'know, a town with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.[everybody laughs]
Homer: Heh heh heh... "Mule."

I had every intention of writing my thoughts on "Birth And After Birth," Tina Howe's new old work (she wrote it in the early 70s, but it's just now making its New York premiere) at the Atlantic Theatre Company. But I just can't. I cannot review absurdist plays.

I've always had a strange relationship with absurdism. I enjoy it, it makes me laugh, and it makes me think, but somehow, I don't think I quite understand it. I've read Pirandello. I've seen Pinter. I just feel like I'm missing a piece of it. It's like I've been smoking pot and find something really funny in the moment, but if you asked me to explain the joke the next day, I could never do it. I mean, I could read the other reviews to see what I'm supposed to think, but somehow, in a post-Julia Sweeney world, that just doesn't seem right.

How to explain this show? Bill (Jeff Binder, whom I last saw hanging upside down in "The Lieutenant of Inishmore") and Sandy (Maggie Kiley) are celebrating the fourth birthday of their son, Nicky (Jordan Gelber, whom I last saw, uh, not wearing underwear in "Avenue Q"). Yes, Nicky is played by an enormous, middle-aged man, who bulldozes through the scenery like...well, analogies fail me. Bill's a pathetic soul intent on capturing every manufactured moment on videotape, Sandy is a physical wreck with sand-textured dandruff and shedding hair and Nicky is every horrific child who has ever sat next to me on an airplane. That is, when he's not donning masks of former presidents Reagan, Lincoln, Carter and Nixon to recreate their famous speeches or playing the cello.

Later, we meet the childless relatives, Jeffrey (Peter Benson) and Mia (Kate Blumberg). See, Jeffrey and Mia are anthropologists who travel the world looking at exotic children in far-flung regions, but much to Bill and Sandy's confusion, they have no desire to have one of their own.

As is standard in absurdist comedies, characters have conversations on-stage that seem to be independent of anything else going on. Bill rambles about changing his name while Nicky and Sandy play a game in which they pretend to be children. Jeffrey shows slides while Mia talks about a tribe of tailed tree people they encountered. Nicky wants grape juice. With ice. Mia ends up simulating birth on the floor and passing out, and...

OK. I get the general premise. Women face a certain pressure to have children. The show made me laugh, the acting was solid and, quite a feat, the device of having an adult play a child did not grate on me once. But if I had to write a thesis on this? I'd fail.

How to get out of this gracefully? Oh! While waiting for the R train on the way to the show, "Christus, der uns selig macht" came up on my iPod. So, my theme song choices are now down to nine. Now if you'll excuse me, I could use some grape juice.