It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, it's
just an overwrought metaphor.
Reviewed
2/3/06
It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, it's
just an overwrought metaphor.
Reviewed
2/3/06
arizona women’s theatre company has the knack of finding actresses to create tightly wound ensembles. It could be the company, its goals, and its desire to give voice to an underrepresented gender. Perhaps it’s Deborah Carrick, the director of some of their works, including their latest play, Ellen McLaughlin’s Tongue of a Bird. Once again, Carrick’s charges are a collection of actresses who make a strong unit. The problem with this production lies not in performance or direction, but directly in its material. McLaughlin’s Tongue is a relentlessly bleak work that leaves no metaphor unbeaten and no subtlety unspoken. I don’t have to worry about spoiling the ending of this show, because the playwright does it at every step by having her characters offer highly charged and obviously coded monologues and dialogue that never gives any doubt about what we’re supposed to think. “Trust your audience” is not in McLaughlin’s playbook.
Maxine (Shane Killoran) is a search and rescue pilot in need of finding herself. She has come home to the Adirondacks to look for Charlotte (Kate Naranjo), a 12 year-old snatched from her field trip with her friends. Her distraught mother Dessa (Jenna Robino) hires Maxine long after hope is lost. Maxine stays with her enigmatic Polish grandmother Zofia (Delores D’Amore Goldsmith) and is haunted by the ghost of her mother Evie (Maureen Dias) who committed suicide around Maxine’s current age. Tragedy does not come from the type of oppressive gloom that pervades McLaughlin’s universe. The strength of tragedy is in the power of the hope that is ultimately snatched away from the audience. Since we are never given any hope from the first moments of the play, any empathy the playwright tries to create is ineffective. It is this flaw that the actresses must play against.
They do a valiant effort. The strongest is Robino, who wrings pathos from Dessa’s impossible situation not with overt sadness, but a well-presented mix of emotions that range from desperate to maniacal. Robino is Dessa, and the power of that simple fact is overwhelming. Killoran is withdrawn almost to catatonia, presenting her overlush monologues with something approaching a deadpan, but I can’t disagree with this character choice, especially with how she handles the final moments of the show. My wife, however, did not agree, and railed against a choice that made an already oppressive show boring. Goldsmith’s Zofia is as endearing as a crazy old woman can be, and she does an excellent job with her character’s accent, if not her pronunciation. Dias is asked to be a tortured metaphor of motherhood, and Naranjo a sad metaphor of innocence lost, and given those impossible character arcs, they do their best. I mean, how great a performance can you give in a tight blue spotlight dressed in motherly duds and adorned with accessories that turn you into Amelia Erhardt?
Once again, I must point out that my wife and I apppeared to be the minority here. What seemed to me obvious made those around us gasp and tear up. After the umpteenth time of having bird imagery thrown at me, others seemed to just grasp the meaning. Even the final pronouncements, telegraphed hours before, seemed to catch others by surprise. If you’re not bothered by hopelessness for hopelessness’ sake or like watching talent as it struggles valiantly, then you should enjoy awtc’s production. Regrettably, for those who can read subtext or would like to see a rise before a fall, you may want to miss this.
