Nina (Katie deBuys), Doyle (Cody Nickell), Emma (Kate Eastwood Norris), and Sorn (Rick Foucheux). Photo by Stan Barouh.
Aaron Posner’s Stupid F***ing Bird soared to a triumphant return to Woolly Mammoth this week–a complete remount with its sensational original cast re-assembled and rearing to go. And indeed, the pitch-perfect tightness of the ensemble, crackling with comic precision, rocked the house. Get your tickets now for this revival, folks; it is sure to sell out quickly.
And it is a revival of sorts–a celebration of the irony and insecurity of our times. Impeccably directed by Howard Shalwitz, the exquisite 7-actor cast does not miss a beat in this irreverent, 4th-wall-breaking, subtext-speaking, inner-snark revealing adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic, The Seagull.
Clearly, musicianship, as well as actor craft, also abounds in this most talented ensemble that, like the audience, is once again having a riotously good time…
Certainly Posner, well-known both as a playwright and director, has tapped into one of the prevailing sensibilities of our sarcastic, uber self-referential era: celebrity and the quest for acclaim.
In fact, towards the end of the first act (a three-act play, compressed into 2 ½ hours with one 15-minute intermission), the company lines up in chairs downstage, a la Chorus Line, and reveals, one by one, their innermost longings—their subtexts, if you will—and we find that they are no more exalted than we, the humble audience. Drama’s dirty little secret revealed (we have met the “artist,” and he is us), and this play becomes a feast of our own desires and disappointments.
Recast in a contemporary era, Chekhov’s characters remain mostly paralleled, with a few hybrids and cross-fertilizations. The Seagull’s focal character, Konstantin, now Con or Connie, an aspiring avant-garde playwright, loves Nina, still of the original name. Nina, an aspiring actress, becomes infatuated with the famous novelist, Trigorin, now Trig, the lover of Connie’s celebrated mother, Irina, now Emma. Emma, a narcissistic grande dame of the stage whose son yearns, resentfully to be sure, for her elusive love and approval, carefully constructs her persona of celebrity.
Entwined in this web of unfortunate passions, are Masha, now Mash, who loves Connie inconsolably, and Medvedenko, now Dev, Connie’s poor friend who loves Mash inconsolably. And then there is Sorn, Posner’s composite character of uncle, brother, landowner, the amiable anchor of the family, a doctor on whom everyone relies but whom no one bothers to know deeply.
The organizing principle, we learn from their confessions, of at least 4 characters’ lives–Emma, Trig, Con, and Nina—is a desire for fame and the adoration of an artistic public, wrapped up to varying degrees with a quest for artistry and originality. Indeed, one could have a bit of fun delivering these seven people up Posner’s sardonic elevator through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, with some stuck at the Love/Belonging level, others reaching toward Esteem, and, ironically, probably only the presumed egotist Trig reaching anything like Self-Actualization or the more exalted Transcendence.
But, no matter the motivations, the cast and crew of this play, set their own stellar pinnacle of theatrical realization.
As Connie, Brad Koed combines a keen, comic pugnacity (particularly effective with the audience) with a swirling, endless despair to give us a quintessentially unhappy modern young man, overwrought and testy, aspiring toward originality but undone by his neuroses. Katie’s DeBuy’s Nina is like an unstable compound, fluctuating between the waif-like, ethereal young hopeful adored by Con, and the unrestrained seductress intent on winning Trig’s affections, only to end up utterly alone. DeBuys gives the final Nina a countenance of the traumatized, the collateral damage of grief and failure and drift.
Kate Eastwood Norris imbues Emma with a divine prima donna-ness–one can scarce imagine a time when she was not the center of attention. A master artisan of her persona’s “brand,” Norris’ Emma is the perfect blend of onstage sensation and offstage glamour. Norris gives us part Tallulah Bankhead, part Joan Didion of the stage, chic, sophisticated, addicted to the adoration of a public addicted to its celebrities. As Trig, Cody Nickle brings a dashing élan to this role of revered novelist. He gives Trig a kind of offhand, even wizened charm that reaches full blossom in the exquisite drinking scene with Mash in Act II. Once faced with a seductive Nina, however, and later an outraged Emma, Nickle’s Trig reveals a timidity that suggests a hidden vulnerability.
But it is Kimberly Gilbert’s Mash and Darius Pierce’s Dev, the least lofty of the characters, who bowl us over, and win at least this heart. Gilbert’s Mash is comic genius, a study in bleakness done brilliantly, a gold mine of self-deprecating, self-pitying humor. In Act II’s drunk scene Gilbert gives us as fine a portrayal of inebriation and inconsolability as one can hope to see. Add to Mash, Darius Piece’s droll, ever-deepening portrayal of Dev, and one has the making of a one of the most memorable onstage couples. Pierce brings an understated, perfectly timed comic deference to Dev, who pines for his beloved Mash with a purity that belies his jesterish exterior. Pierce’s Dev speaks to the imperfections in all of us, and perhaps more than anyone on stage, we want him to find happiness and requirement.
Add to this Rick Foucheux’s masterful portrayal of Dr. Sorn, and the depth of Chekhov’s insight into the human heart resonates beyond the irony of our times. Foucheux brings his signature wry and brilliant subtlety and nuance to this least celebrated and most masculine of characters, a deep disquiet hidden beneath the stabilizing role imposed on Sorn by family and world alike. Foucheux’s Sorn is the most tragic, the most noble of the play’s characters—an Everyman who, unlike all the others, has walked the walk of other-directedness his whole life, however conflicted he might have been.
Howard Shalwitz’s razor-sharp direction guides Posner’s quick-witted and quixotic plunge into the ironic sensibility that dominates our well-off, Western senses of self and society. Gone are the Chekhovian realities trapped by the rigid social order and deprivations of Czarist Russia, and present instead are contemporary variations where ironically all of this “more” is most decidedly “less,” and audiences are plunged into laughter at the self-recognition of it all. Perhaps in a nod to the long-running, long-form cable drama, Six Feet Under, Posner has his characters at the play’s end give us a summation of each of their lives fast forwarded to their respective conclusions. A fitting ending to this tell-all adaptation of Chekhov’s timeless tale.
The spare yet spectacular set by Misha Kachman evokes the iconic and the ironic. Kachman has stripped bare the stage, exposing all the walls and mechanisms of the theatre, much as Posner and Shalwitz expose all the machinations of the theatrical contracts between actor and character, audience and actors, playwright and players. Stenciled graffiti-like portraits of Chekhov the Master adorn the back walls, a samovar sits on a rustic table, a weathered upright piano graces the upstage. Act II transforms the stage into a familiar kitchen, complete with magnetic letters on an aging refrigerator, and quickly emptying bottles of whisky and gin. Costume Designer Laree Lentz has dressed the characters in modern garb that nonetheless evokes a Chekhovian era—Emma is glamorous and sleek, Mash is draped in Gothy black, Nina is clad in wafting, half-bare dresses, Trig’s European stylings suggest a debonair man of the world. Lighting Design by Colin K. Bills congeals the sense of time and place, heightening the theatrical tension of the moment. Special applause for the Original Music & Sound Design by James Sugg. The many charming, funny, and subtext-revealing songs sung and played throughout each had their own quirky integrity. And many kudos to the actor-singer-musicians for their lilting musicianship throughout. Clearly, musicianship, as well as actor craft, also abounds in this most talented ensemble that, like the audience, is once again having a riotously good time in Aaron Posner’s Stupid F***ing Bird.
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.
Advisory: Profanity and Nudity.
Stupid F***ing Bird plays through August 17, 2014 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company – 641 D Street NW, in Washington, D.C. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 393-3939, or purchase them online.
