Theatre in Review: Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons/WP Theater)A gaggle of contemporary tropes -- identity politics, white-savior syndrome, and the ever-popular dysfunctional family -- gets taken for a ride in this wild tour of life in the jittery, mixed-up twenty-first century. Playwright Julia Izumi may not have a knack for catchy titles, but in this debut work she executes a nearly faultless high-wire act, nimbly treading the thinnest of lines between farce and tragedy. In the center ring of this absurdist circus is a trio of siblings: Illy, an insanely successful classical violinist; the none-too-bright Neel, who works as an HR assistant; and Mora, defined by a past littered with bad decisions. The Asian children of Cam and Elinore, a white couple, they are about to be scattered by chance to the four winds. In Izumi's opening gambit, Illy and Neel announce they are lovers, news that sends Mora into a tailspin. Her siblings are mildly baffled; after all, as Neel notes, he and Illy aren't connected by blood. And, anyway, given their family history, this quasi-incestuous affair is, really, small potatoes. As Neel succinctly puts it to the distressed Mora, "When you're an Asian adoptee whose parents won't let you or your adopted siblings know what country you each separately come from, and you're also a human disaster who lives in your childhood New Jersey home because you can't keep a job and you keep getting dumped, and your pill-popping mom is awaiting trial for arson and manslaughter for setting your dad on fire because he cheated on her multiple times, does your genetically unrelated brother and sister being in love with each other really seem that bad?" Well, when you put it that way... Meanwhile, Illy has invested her considerable fortune in a "sky home," a kind of treehouse for billionaires; it involves purchasing chunks of the atmosphere, a scheme that causes the natural world to revolt, led by some of the most assertive avians to be seen since "Tippi" Hedren nearly got pecked to death. And, breaking the pact that mandated all three would seek out their birth parents together, Mora hops a flight to Cambodia where, making a crucial family connection, she also meets a horrible fate that evoked gasps, followed by a wave of shocked laughter, from the blindsided audience at the performance I attended. State a proposition and Izumi will find a way to comically undermine it. Whatever the circumstances of their births, Illy, Mora, and Neel were profoundly unlucky to be adopted by Elinore and Cam, whose spectacularly bad marriage, shaped by addiction, ends in murder and arson. (The middle portion of You-Shin Chen's cleverly cartooned set is badly singed, erasing Cam from the prominently displayed family portrait.) But, in Mora's case, the search for her lost heritage ends in unintended calamity. Anyway, Elinore, slipping into comic dementia behind bars, and Cam, reincarnated as a snowman (don't ask), are basically pathetic and feckless despite their manifold sins. In the playwright's view, it's a wild, wild world and anyone grasping at the straws of certainty is ripe for disillusionment. Indeed, her way of playing tragedy for laughs, without discounting the anguish underneath, is highly unusual in today's theatre. Mora warns Illy that Elinore will be furious over the affair with Neel. "She's never gonna get outta jail because she's a murderer and an arsonist," insists Illy. "She's a white lady," snaps Mora "She'll probably just get community service!" Neel, who believes his identity is "Filipinx," is distressed to learn that he is tone deaf, citing his shared heritage with those notable vocalists Bruno Mars. H.E.R., Olivia Rodrigo, and Imelda Marcos." "Imelda Marco? asks a bemused Illy. "She sings 'Here Lies Love'," replies Neel, who clearly needs a refresher course in musical theatre. Cam, who is revealed to have been the worst Asian history professor ever, details his extramarital history in the third person, saying, "Cam Whistler fell in love with his first mistress when she sighed. Cam Whistler fell in love with his second mistress when she raised her hand." Think about that one for a second. Director Jenny Koons knows exactly how to pitch these bizarre proceedings, especially in a funeral sequence that is equally sad and farcical thanks to the interruption of a long-awaited plumber. The cast is adept at negotiating this tonal minefield, beginning with Sasha Diamond, whose Illy goes from breezy entitlement to aching loss; Sky Smith as Neel, who reinvents himself as an environmentalist, finding common cause with those birds; and Shannon Tyo, an insatiable vessel of rage as Mora. Equally fine are Gibson Frazier as Cam, especially when trying to explain that Pol Pot had his good side, and Pearl Sun as Mora's faintly enigmatic mother, reunited with her daughter only by chance. As Elinore, her mind addled by too much Vicodin, Kristine Nielsen demonstrates her unrivaled skill at finding the laugh in any line. (To be sure, her exchanges with her kids have a vaudevillian quality. Mora: "Why aren't you upset that your children are romantically involved with each other?" Elinore: "It means we're a happy family," Mora: "You incinerated our dad." Elinore: "Yes, and now I'm happy.") Chen's tripartite set is inventively lit by Stacey Derosier, who mixes bright white washes with striking color effects and the occasional hard-edge followspot effect. Alicia J. Austin's costumes are solidly attuned to each character's personal style. Megumi Katayama's sound design includes a kicky preshow playlist that includes "Twilight" by Anderson .Paak and "Ordinary Pleasure" by Toro y Moi along with prison buzzers, a cacophony of birds, and the strategic use of the Journey classic "Small Town Girl." And love those bird puppets by Dan Jones. It's true that Regretfully, So the Birds Are has a certain helter-skelter quality, and the environmental plot thread sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. But Izumi is a fresh voice; like many other young playwrights, she writes about ethnic identity and domestic issues, but, framing them in a broader view of a chaotic and mysterious universe, she achieves very different results. She is an original, and in her Playwrights Horizons has a real find. --David Barbour 
|
