Third time’s the charm in what you might call variations on a theme by Chekhov, with the splendidly acted and thoroughly engaging production of Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird that opened last night at the Pearl Theatre Company.
In the past six months, New York audiences have been treated to three decidedly different plays that have riffed on the great Russian playwright’s The Seagull. The first of these, Songbird, showed up in October. It was a musical that transported its 19th century characters to a modern day Nashville honky-tonk. Lauren Pritchard’s country, blues, and rock score was nicely performed by a top-notch cast, headed up by the resplendent Kate Baldwin, but the connection with the Chekhov play was strained beyond credibility.*
Then last week, the experimental Irish theater company Pan Pan offered up its version, titled The Seagull and Other Birds. “Experimental” is the operant word here, and this version – replete with cast members dressed in leotards and tutus uttering lines as enigmatic as anything written by James Joyce – is alternately Mad Tea Party fun and bewilderingly convoluted.*
Which brings us to Posner’s version, truly a Seagull for our time. The playwright translates Chekhov’s themes for modern audiences in this self-styled “sort of” adaptation better than anyone else writing for the theater today – and assuredly better by far than either of the two previous efforts from the past year. I’d also venture to say that Posner knows his Shakespeare as well, maybe even his Goethe, for Shakespeare’s timeless comedies about unrequited love among the young and Goethe’s ode to youthful, tragic romanticism, The Sorrows of Young Werther, suffuse this production.
So Dev (Medvedenko in Chekhov) pines for Mash (Masha) who longs for Conrad (Konstantin) who aches for Nina who is hot for Trigorin. It is all as sighingly and romantically tormented as Werther’s love for Charlotte and as humanly comic as the Demetrius/Hermia/Lysander/Helena mashup in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
As in The Seagull, we are met with a young iconoclastic writer Conrad (Christopher Sears), who has lived in the shadow of his famous if distant and narcissistic actress mother “Emma” Arkadina (Bianca Amato), and her lover, the successful and popular writer “Doyle” Trigorin (Erik Lochtefeld). All have gathered at the home of the actress’s brother Sorn (Dan Daily) to witness the debut performance of one of Conrad’s densely inscrutable plays.
Things unfold along the same lines as they do in The Seagull, and throughout Stupid Fucking Bird, there is strong adherence to Chekhov’s original plot – but with many modern twists and even bits of improvising through fourth wall-breaching interactions with the audience. At one point, Conrad pleads with audience members for advice on winning back Nina – his muse and the woman he perceives to be his soulmate – after she has thrown herself at Trigorin. At the performance I attended, Mr. Sears was able to elicit responses from the audience, culminating in one suggestion he loved: “Kill a seagull.”
While Act I leans precariously towards spoof, Act II picks up on Chekhov’s themes in a more naturalistic vein, dealing both with the absurd side of human foibles and with serious issues of aspirations and regrets. We find ourselves growing fonder of all of the characters as they become more real to us. It’s easy enough, for instance, to mock Mash(a)’s morose demeanor (in Pan Pan’s version of the play, she is performed by an unsmiling, black tutu-wearing Una McKevitt; here Joey Parsons appears as a black-draped goth teenager). But darned if we don’t warm to Ms. Parson’s characterization, especially as time passes and she matures into a lovely adult. The same is true for Conrad’s closest friend Dev (a goofily charming Joe Paulik), a man with more depths than one imagines him to possess at first glance.
By imbuing all of the characters with greater dimensions, Mr. Posner brings Chekhov's vision fully to life for today’s audiences. The follies that make them targets for satire become absorbed into their more richly realized characterizations, so that Stupid Fucking Bird does what all great adaptations should do; it honors the original while bringing something new to the table.
Kudos to all involved in this masterful production, from the fine cast, to director Davis McCallum, to the designers Sandra Goldmark (clever set), Amy Clark (costumes), Mike Inwood (lighting) and Mikhail Fiksel (sound). Chekhov, I believe, would be proud.
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*For reviews of Songbird, click here. For reviews of The Seagull and Other Birds, click here.
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