Stupid Fucking Bird

Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Circle X Theatre Co. and Theatre @ BostonCourt
Through August 10

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Photo by Ed Krieger

People are always doing things to Chekhov. At least since the 1950s, when Joshua Logan reset The Cherry Orchard to the post-Civil War American South in a short-lived adaptation called The Wisteria Trees, the Russian playwright has been adapted, spoofed, satirized, de-constructed, re-conceived, re-thought, re-written and plagiarized. Chekhov Derivatives and Recycling has become a growth industry. Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird is part of that movement, but it’s more interesting than most because, despite its departures from the original text, it remains, for most of its length, true in spirit to Chekhov.

Posner has cut a couple of characters, combined others, updated the action, and he plays lots of meta-theatrical tricks. These include direct address to the audience (asking it for advice on occasion), characters who keep reminding us that we are the audience and this is a play they are in, and even, at one point, telling Chekhov (or his projected image) to “fuck off!” Posner brings Chekhov’s buried conflicts out in the open, and says directly things that the Russian writer only implied. And Posner adds songs, vaudeville turns, and a passionate nude love scene that no 19^th century writer would have dared include in a play to be produced.

Constantine Treplev becomes Conrad “Connie” Arkadina (Will Bradley), the rebellious young writer who creates — not a play — but an experimental site-specific performance piece to be performed in his actress mother’s backyard. And the piece is acted by his neighbor and girl-friend Nina (Zarah Mahler), before an audience consisting of his uncle Dr. Sorn, a conflation of Chekhov’s Dr. Dorn and Sorin (Arye Gross); his egocentric movie-star mother Emma Arkadina (Amy Pietz); her lover, the popular novelist Doyle Trigorin; the ukulele playing eternal pessimist Mash Pemberton (Charlotte Gulezian); and the eternal optimist Dev Dylan (Adam Silver), who loves Mash.

The plot proceeds much as it always has in The Seagull: Mash mourns her hopeless love for Connie. Nina falls for Trigorin and abandons Connie. He, in despair shoots a bird. Is it a seagull? He’s not sure. He presents it to Nina in a plastic shopping bag. Trigorin has a fling with Nina, and they have a baby, but it dies and he abandons her to go back to Emma. Connie makes a failed suicide attempt. Mash marries Dev, whom she knows she can never love—though perhaps she learns to.

Posner’s script is clever, erudite, subversive, often funny, and always entertaining. Director Michael Michetti gives it a brilliant and lovely production, well-acted, inventive and thoughtful. Bradley’s Connie is passionate, despairing, and exuberantly physical, pursuing his ideological rants, and concluding surprisingly that maybe the old forms are still useful, but they need to be done better. Arye Gross’s Sorn is rueful, shambling and rather endearing. As he says, “I just need a hug.” As Nina, Mahler is a spunky gal, not afraid to confess her love, but seemingly more in love with celebrity and fame than with Trigorin or her acting career. Pietz’s Emma is a dreadful mother and a quintessential actress who must always be the center of all attention.

Miller’s Trigorin is a man who goes along to get along, and only wants “more of the same.” As Mash, Gulezian’s is a natural-born anarchist, though her anarchy is subdued by marriage. And Silver lights up the stage as the sunny-spirited Dev Dylan, whose indestructible optimism is underpinned with a shrewd knowledge of the ways of the world.

Stephanie Kerley Schwartz’s handsome sets range from bare and minimalist in Act I to a kitchen interior so realistically detailed that it includes not only a kitchen sink but a working blender where Connie can make his berry slushies. Mallory Kay Nelson’s costumes are colorful and apt, and the mottos on the tee-shirts provide an alternative sub-text, and Sean Cawelti’s projections nicely illuminate Connie’s performance art.

Circle X Theatre Company at Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (no perf July 4); through August 10. (626) 683-6883, bostoncourt.org