Maureen Sebastian, Cindy Cheung, Robyn Kerr, and Liz Wisan Photo by Joan Marcus

Written and directed by Ogawa, the show was, as explained by one of the performers, "inspired by interviews with real moms." Yet, the sketches, songs, and weird theatrics present in Meat Suit come across as surprisingly generic. The show's title song, for instance, articulates the physical changes affecting women's bodies: "I always thought my body was my very own/ But now I know it's just a skin-bag full of blood and bones." (Leyna Marika Papach provided the original music and lyrics, and Megumi Katayama designed the sound elements.) Except "Stardust," a song dedicated to mothers who lost a child, the musical numbers do not make much of an impact.

The brief character scenes are similarly unexceptionable. There are a few that stand out, though. One scene focuses on a pair of women in a park who strike up a tenuous kinship based solely on their identities as mothers. There is an extended sketch depicting the close bonds of a mother and child gradually loosening as the son grows older. Ogawa's staging, in which the coiled bodies of the performers unwind and gradually separate, gives vivid immediacy to this familiar dissolution of maternal connection.

Even the directorial and design approach seems outmoded. The show's revue-like structure calls to mind A ... My Name Is Alice and its sequel A ... My Name Is Still Alice, as well as more recent shows like Menopause: The Musical, but Meat Suit revels in its unconventionality, which becomes wearisome before we get to the autobiographical narratives (and then quickly return to the self-conscious quirkiness).

Ogawa has set the show in "The Universe of the Womb," and scenic designer Jian Jung fills the stage with plush human organs and entrails. The women's exaggerated costumes (also by Jung) include wraps and coverings that appear to contain external body parts in sausage casing. And there are plenty of comical representations of leaky, engorged, and desiccated breasts, highlighting the ways that women are made to feel that their bodies are both grotesque and comestible. The visuals are a throwback to the 1970s and '80s absurdist plays of Maria Irene Fornés and performance art pieces one might have seen at La MaMa, WOW Café, or PS 122.

The cast, which consists of Marina Celander, Cindy Cheung, Robyn Kerr, Maureen Sebastian, and Liz Wisan, do admirable work with the material at hand. In order to establish greater intimacy, the Irene Diamond Stage at the Signature has been transformed so that the audience enters through the auditorium and shares the stage with the performers. This allows for a potentially communal experience, and Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and Christina F. Tang's lighting contributes to this sense of mutual affinity. The excessiveness of the production kept pushing me further and further away.

I admit to feeling a bit churlish passing judgment on a show about motherhood. I am not a parent, and I will never be a parent. (But, to riff on Glinda in Wicked, I had a mother ... "as so many do.") Certain works, however, have offered moments of sublime empathy about the shit show of motherhood, and I have been profoundly affected by particular performances. Off the top of my head, I think about Carrie Coon and Rachel McAdams in separate productions of Mary Jane, Jessica Lange in Mother Play, and most recently, Rose Byrne in the film If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. Regrettably, Meat Suit left me cold.