Don’t let the title mislead you.
Apart from the R-rated language that is now common in many, if not most, realistic modern plays that confront serious themes, “Stupid F*cking Bird” is neither a naughty shock-comedy nor some subversive drama of protest. Indeed, the title is almost irrelevant, as the titular seagull, shot to impress a girl, is noted to have no real importance — it’s just some stupid freakin’ bird.
Running at Trustus Theatre through Saturday, Feb. 24, Aaron Posner’s tragicomedy based on a Russian's masterpiece can be interpreted and enjoyed on many levels. The surface plot is about an extended family — uncle, mother, son and their friends and lovers — who struggle with conflicting priorities in creativity, self-expression, romance and personal fulfillment.
At the same time, the author is making a bold and risky attempt at infusing a new vitality and realism into traditional dramatic structure and presentation.
Director Jessica Francis Fichter and her veteran cast accomplish that goal easily, infusing not just dialogue and blocking, but also the pauses, silences, breaks, stammers and wordless frustrations of modern vernacular with seething emotion. To recreate it here, it's like, I mean ... you know … I just can't … so yeah.
A third goal is echoed by Posner's central character, Con (Patrick Dodds), a tortured would-be dramatic artist who desires to break down the barrier between actor and audience. Con's vision surpasses his talent, perhaps because his primary motivation seems to be to antagonize and mock his actress mother Emma (Erin Wilson) while impressing the cute neighbor girl Nina (Cassidy Spencer), who similarly imagines herself to be a rising star. Yet Posner, as playwright, tackles that very same challenge with decent results, as characters directly address matinee attendees, and reveal their most basic hopes and dreams.
If that set-up sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking of Chekhov’s 1884 classic “The Seagull,” which covered similar ground, and upon which this play is “kinda based,” as per the program credits.
It’s my belief that the author, Posner, intended to deconstruct the fundamental elements of the hugely influential and groundbreaking Russian original to acknowledge that the material might seem remote, dated and inaccessible to hip 21st Century playgoers, and to translate its essence into something new, modern, relevant and perhaps even shocking. Starting with the provocative name.
He’s at least partially successful, although I suspect only academics and theater buffs will understand how and why.
Ironically, his dialogue flows and pops with crackling energy, but the play slows down when longer deliberations channel Chekhov’s talkiness. Still, the acting at a recent matinee was stellar.
Cassidy Spencer stars in Trust Theatre's "Stupid F*cking Bird," adapted from the Anton Chekhov play, "The Seagull."
Erin Wilson, as a journeyman actress who has never mastered parenting, portrays ostensibly an unsympathetic character, yet the actor allowed us to understand her quite reasonable aspirations. Martha Hearn as a mopey emo-girl made a stock character three-dimensional, while Cassidy Spencer expertly traced Nina’s gradual decline from bright-eyed innocent to basket case. Hunter Boyle’s aging uncle presided over this dysfunction, and while this character was the least developed, Boyle employed a world-weary sadness and fatality that placed much into perspective.
In a play with many witty lines and observations on life and art, the overall, pervasive sense of tragedy was alleviated by comic relief and down-to-earth earnestness from Cameron Muccio as Con’s schlubby friend Dev. While characters scrambled to find despair, Muccio embodied the ordinary mensch who just tries to make it through life as best he can; Dev’s modest ambitions seemed vindicated when, reflecting on his life from the vantage point of old age, he observed that his happiest moments were with his grandchildren, and that simple moment of honesty seemed more touching and heartbreaking than any number of turbulent events relating to careers and romance.
Top acting honors go to Dodds as Con, and to the director, Fichter, for the heights which she has helped him reach.
Twelve years ago the actor made his adult/professional/Trustus debut in “Spring Awakening,” inspiring me to write that his performance was “filled with rage and unfulfilled yearning,” and that “Dodds knocks it out of the acting ballpark with a perceptive, tragic portrait of a boy falling apart at the seams.”
The same can be said here, and he’s only gotten better. This was as gripping a performance as I can recall since, well, Dodds in 2017’s “Boy” in the Trustus Side Door space, or Dodds in 2013’s “The Shape of Things” at Workshop Theatre. Particularly compelling was his character’s admitted self-awareness that he was in a play, trapped into following the same self-destructive path nightly against his will. Dodds was the clear master of all that’s implied in the final half of half-finished sentences and inarticulated anguish.
Teddy Palmer’s scenic design was appropriate for the material, if not exactly as polished or detailed as one expects at Trustus, and reinforced the notion that we were attending a “site-specific performance event,” not something attempting to create the illusion of reality. Sound, lighting and costumes similarly captured the bleakness of the theme.
Thanks in large part to the acting, and to the surreal implications of a self-aware play, “Stupid F*cking Bird” is a fascinating exploration of some complex concepts. Just don’t tell anyone that it’s an homage to the vision of Chekhov.
