There’s nothing like an intimate theater where the audience feels like they’re sitting in someone’s home, watching a family drama unfold. That’s the mood set by Tek Theatrical Productions' To Each Their Own, written by Tracey Knight Narang and directed by Charles E. Gerber.

Part of the New York International Fringe Festival, To Each Their Own takes place in the living room of Liz (Catherine Frels) and John (Tom Berdik), a couple who decided when they were younger to postpone family in favor of career. When they do try to have children, they realize perhaps they waited too long, as they recount their struggles through fertility treatments and disappointment.

Except for the fact that they’re a wealthy Upper East Side family, the characters are easy to relate to, if not always easy to like. Liz’s sister Jenn (Elizabeth Inghram) breezes in and out of the apartment to act as her sister’s counterpart, a woman who had a baby at 21 and feels she missed out on her youth. She makes up for that by constantly working on her golf game and her physique, and by possessing the maturity level of a junior high school girl, a personality that becomes annoying long before the end of the play.

Secrets abound in To Each Their Own. John’s mother Helen (Sandra Karas) talks mysteriously about a boyfriend in California that no one has ever met. She also still mourns a beloved daughter named Emma, who we gather was mentally disabled and died 40 years earlier. There’s something not quite right about Helen’s version of things, and eventually, through carefully placed hints, the audience can guess the truth and yet still be interested when it’s finally revealed to the rest of the family.

Overall, it’s easy to believe how badly Liz and John want a baby, and how scarred John still is by his long-gone sister’s illness. Helen is caring and selfish at the same time, and personifies the theme of doing one’s best, a theme that weaves throughout the story. There are also opportunities to ponder the moralities of genetic prenatal testing, abortion, and how much say a woman has about her own body when she is pregnant.

A few scenes drag on too long, or seem altogether unnecessary, but the intimate setting of the theater, the talented storytelling, and the frequent but not too fast-paced revolving of characters makes To Each Their Own a worthwhile addition to the Fringe Festival.