It Happened in Key West: Nothing but Potential for this Weird AF Romantic Comedyby Randi / August 30, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “Home, I’m Darling”, which ended its run on September 5 at London’s Dorfman Theatre.
In the opening scene of the wonderful new play “Home, I’m Darling”, you’re quickly transported to the 1950s, watching a “terribly happy”, no, “appallingly happy!” husband and wife go through their morning routine: the full-skirted wife in her brightly colored period-perfect kitchen dotes on her husband and serves him his perfectly toasted toast, his perfectly made tea, before bidding him farewell as he gathers his hat and briefcase and sets off for the office. It’s all very first-half-of-‘Pleasantville’, until the wife slumps into her chair and pulls out a silver MacBook from a drawer. With that flawless introduction, we know we have this couple not in the ‘50s, but living today, among us, who are actively choosing to live like they are stuck in the past. Why they would do this and how happy they could really be are the first questions that spring to mind, of many, and this play does a marvelous job of answering them.
In the opening scene of the wonderful new play “Home, I’m Darling”, you’re quickly transported to the 1950s, watching a “terribly happy”, no, “appallingly happy!” husband and wife go through their morning routine: the full-skirted wife in her brightly colored period-perfect kitchen dotes on her husband and serves him his perfectly toasted toast, his perfectly made tea, before bidding him farewell as he gathers his hat and briefcase and sets off for the office. It’s all very first-half-of-‘Pleasantville’, until the wife slumps into her chair and pulls out a silver MacBook from a drawer. With that flawless introduction, we know we have this couple not in the ‘50s, but living today, among us, who are actively choosing to live like they are stuck in the past. Why they would do this and how happy they could really be are the first questions that spring to mind, of many, and this play does a marvelous job of answering them.
With Laura Wade’s compelling script, tight and well edited yet large in scope, “Home, I’m Darling” seems like it will be a straightforward look at gender roles and whether feminism really does encompass the choice to be subordinate, but it develops into a complex deep-dive into what makes a marriage successful. When we meet Judy and Johnny, they’ve been doing this 1950s experiment for 3 years, after Judy was made redundant at her high-powered finance job (which we see in a truly great use of flexible and creative direction). Since the two of them love ‘50s fashion and old-timey cars, Judy suggests that they go all-in and she becomes a stereotypical ‘50s housewife, doing housework (with only era-appropriate appliances and cleaning methods, which she learns from her ‘bible’, a 1949 instruction book for housewives) and cooking (meat and potatoes and other suitably ‘50s meals) and baking up a storm and bringing her husband his slippers and a cocktail every day when he gets home from work. They turn their house and every aspect of their marriage into a flashback, not realizing that moving back in time will prevent them from growing together in their marriage.
Since the play is written and directed by women, I assumed like any good feminist that the woman would get sick and tired of being subordinate. But the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that. It unexpectedly becomes a stark look at the futility of trying to capture ‘the good old days’ when it’s really a means of hiding from your own problems. I was surprised that Johnny (Richard Harrington), waited on hand and foot, would ever get tired of the arrangement, assuming that it would be a dream for him and most men. But of course he did, because both people in a relationship have to take care of each other, and anything too one-sided is going to fail. Johnny also starts to lose respect for his wife, and a self-conscious embarrassment when outsiders see how they live soon takes over.
And Judy, who seems at first to be a straightforward housewife with some self-esteem issues, is much more complex too. Played by a fantastic Katherine Parkinson, Judy desperately clings to this lifestyle, even when faced with how many problems it’s causing, because it’s her way of feeling safe against the outside world. I was struck by Katherine’s too-calm tone in her delivery, like she was deliberately avoiding causing any kind of stir to upset not only her husband but the fragile world they created. When she finally confronts why she would want to live like this, Judy admits that she feels like when you’d be sick from school for a week, missing crucial lessons and feeling a little lost on those topics from that point forward, terrified that there will be a question on the exam about that. “That’s how I feel about the world”, she says. This bubble she wanted to create was the ultimate safe space for her, and if it doesn’t work, then she’ll have to deal with her own issues.
Including the backstory of Judy’s unconventional upbringing, which influenced her worldview as well, could have felt forced but instead it seemed earnest. Raised by an uber-feminist mother (a really fun Sian Thomas, in a role that could have easily been annoying but instead was cathartic) on a commune, Judy always felt a yearning for a traditional family life. Her mother, horrified by her daughter’s decision to live this way, is the only voice of reason, continually admonishing Judy and reminding her of how silly it all is with great lines like, “You can’t be nostalgic for the ‘50s – you weren’t there!” But rather than nostalgia, it’s more a dream of an escape, an avoidance of the real world, and she has transformed her feeling of being ill-equipped to handle the real world into a decision to stay safe and secure in this way.
Plenty of time is spent looking into their relationship with their best friends and into Johnny’s work life, which lets us see the fully formed universe of this story. Johnny’s deteriorating performance at work is linked to his unhappiness at home, as is his seemingly desperate and superficial attraction to his new young boss, something modern to tell himself he wants instead of dealing with problems. Their friends Fran and Marcus enjoy dressing up in period clothes sometimes and joining Judy and Johnny at something called Jivestock, an annual weekend event that sounds like my absolute nightmare. But their reticence to commit to playing unnatural parts feels like a personal injury to Judy, like yet another little poke at her bubble threatening to force her into an unwanted reckoning. When the man friend is in trouble at work for sexual harassment, it’s unclear whether Judy’s inclination to immediate side with him (against the more-and-more obviously right victim) is a result of her role-playing warping her brain or something she actually believes in, and the haze around this side plot is brilliantly formed.
Also brilliantly formed is the set, and honestly even if you weren’t into the story, you could happily spent the 2 ½ hours examining all the details of the two-story house they built. Each room was a different bright color with period-perfect décor, down to the pineapple-shaped ice bucket on their chic mid-century modern bar. Same for Judy’s gorgeous costumes, although the rest of the costumes left me cold. And I’ve never, ever seen any play that has such elaborate prop work, most of it food. SO MUCH FOOD! They eat breakfast, she makes his lunch, they eat dinner, she bakes, she cooks for guests, they eat dinner again – I can’t remember one 10 second snippet of this play that didn’t have food or cocktails involved. Honestly I don’t know how the actors or the crew keep track of all of that (and I hope they don’t waste all of it).
Aside from the scene breaks, in which two actors would dance to ‘50s music while the scene changed (it was hella awkward when they aren’t professional dancers), there’s not much I would change about this play. Although it seems like a straightforward story, the complicated issues of our protagonists are unexpected and profound, and the show reveals a lot more about the modern world and relationships than you’d think from the candy-colored look of it all.
INFORMATION
Yeah so I didn’t know I was seeing it on the last day! I am really hoping for a transfer of some sort because it deserves a longer run in a bigger theatre, especially to get more use out of that set!
I bought a Friday rush ticket (the National Theatre offers rush tickets for the following week’s performances across its theatres at noon every Friday) for 24 pounddollars, for a restricted view seat. My seat, P58, was on the stage right side of the mezzanine, which I really liked for one reason (the stage and stalls are actually below ground so my mezz seat was ground level (I don’t like being underground)) and disliked for most others (it was really restricted). There’s a big bar like RIGHT THERE so I had to do a lot of leaning over to see the living room at stage right. Even P59 would be a better option, even though it’s a more extreme angle, because the bar isn’t there. Just so you know for Dorfman bookings.
As is expected at every London play I see, the audience (and mostly the older men) laughed at WEIRD times. Like, when the friend admits that he’s on leave from work because he was inappropriate with his secretary, the old men in the audience LAUGHED. I imagine they were laughing in remembered commiseration like ‘ho boy do I know what that’s like!’ man alive.
Since the play is written and directed by women, I assumed like any good feminist that the woman would get sick and tired of being subordinate. But the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that. It unexpectedly becomes a stark look at the futility of trying to capture ‘the good old days’ when it’s really a means of hiding from your own problems. I was surprised that Johnny (Richard Harrington), waited on hand and foot, would ever get tired of the arrangement, assuming that it would be a dream for him and most men. But of course he did, because both people in a relationship have to take care of each other, and anything too one-sided is going to fail. Johnny also starts to lose respect for his wife, and a self-conscious embarrassment when outsiders see how they live soon takes over.
And Judy, who seems at first to be a straightforward housewife with some self-esteem issues, is much more complex too. Played by a fantastic Katherine Parkinson, Judy desperately clings to this lifestyle, even when faced with how many problems it’s causing, because it’s her way of feeling safe against the outside world. I was struck by Katherine’s too-calm tone in her delivery, like she was deliberately avoiding causing any kind of stir to upset not only her husband but the fragile world they created. When she finally confronts why she would want to live like this, Judy admits that she feels like when you’d be sick from school for a week, missing crucial lessons and feeling a little lost on those topics from that point forward, terrified that there will be a question on the exam about that. “That’s how I feel about the world”, she says. This bubble she wanted to create was the ultimate safe space for her, and if it doesn’t work, then she’ll have to deal with her own issues.
Including the backstory of Judy’s unconventional upbringing, which influenced her worldview as well, could have felt forced but instead it seemed earnest. Raised by an uber-feminist mother (a really fun Sian Thomas, in a role that could have easily been annoying but instead was cathartic) on a commune, Judy always felt a yearning for a traditional family life. Her mother, horrified by her daughter’s decision to live this way, is the only voice of reason, continually admonishing Judy and reminding her of how silly it all is with great lines like, “You can’t be nostalgic for the ‘50s – you weren’t there!” But rather than nostalgia, it’s more a dream of an escape, an avoidance of the real world, and she has transformed her feeling of being ill-equipped to handle the real world into a decision to stay safe and secure in this way.
Plenty of time is spent looking into their relationship with their best friends and into Johnny’s work life, which lets us see the fully formed universe of this story. Johnny’s deteriorating performance at work is linked to his unhappiness at home, as is his seemingly desperate and superficial attraction to his new young boss, something modern to tell himself he wants instead of dealing with problems. Their friends Fran and Marcus enjoy dressing up in period clothes sometimes and joining Judy and Johnny at something called Jivestock, an annual weekend event that sounds like my absolute nightmare. But their reticence to commit to playing unnatural parts feels like a personal injury to Judy, like yet another little poke at her bubble threatening to force her into an unwanted reckoning. When the man friend is in trouble at work for sexual harassment, it’s unclear whether Judy’s inclination to immediate side with him (against the more-and-more obviously right victim) is a result of her role-playing warping her brain or something she actually believes in, and the haze around this side plot is brilliantly formed.
Also brilliantly formed is the set, and honestly even if you weren’t into the story, you could happily spent the 2 ½ hours examining all the details of the two-story house they built. Each room was a different bright color with period-perfect décor, down to the pineapple-shaped ice bucket on their chic mid-century modern bar. Same for Judy’s gorgeous costumes, although the rest of the costumes left me cold. And I’ve never, ever seen any play that has such elaborate prop work, most of it food. SO MUCH FOOD! They eat breakfast, she makes his lunch, they eat dinner, she bakes, she cooks for guests, they eat dinner again – I can’t remember one 10 second snippet of this play that didn’t have food or cocktails involved. Honestly I don’t know how the actors or the crew keep track of all of that (and I hope they don’t waste all of it).
Aside from the scene breaks, in which two actors would dance to ‘50s music while the scene changed (it was hella awkward when they aren’t professional dancers), there’s not much I would change about this play. Although it seems like a straightforward story, the complicated issues of our protagonists are unexpected and profound, and the show reveals a lot more about the modern world and relationships than you’d think from the candy-colored look of it all.
INFORMATION
Yeah so I didn’t know I was seeing it on the last day! I am really hoping for a transfer of some sort because it deserves a longer run in a bigger theatre, especially to get more use out of that set!
I bought a Friday rush ticket (the National Theatre offers rush tickets for the following week’s performances across its theatres at noon every Friday) for 24 pounddollars, for a restricted view seat. My seat, P58, was on the stage right side of the mezzanine, which I really liked for one reason (the stage and stalls are actually below ground so my mezz seat was ground level (I don’t like being underground)) and disliked for most others (it was really restricted). There’s a big bar like RIGHT THERE so I had to do a lot of leaning over to see the living room at stage right. Even P59 would be a better option, even though it’s a more extreme angle, because the bar isn’t there. Just so you know for Dorfman bookings.
As is expected at every London play I see, the audience (and mostly the older men) laughed at WEIRD times. Like, when the friend admits that he’s on leave from work because he was inappropriate with his secretary, the old men in the audience LAUGHED. I imagine they were laughing in remembered commiseration like ‘ho boy do I know what that’s like!’ man alive.
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All My Sons at the Old Vic: I Don’t Know How Many Sons We’re Talking About But I’m Bored
You tell me Sally Field is coming to London, I’m gonna be there front and center holding up a big sign with GO SALLY! WE LIKE YOU! written in bubble letters. Metaphorically speaking, of course; I’m not a monster. So the chance to see the absolute ledge, what a ledge, perform live is something I’m grateful for. I’m glad I got to see her. What a treat.
You can tell I’m trying to delay talking at all about the play, huh? Okay, well let’s just say it’s fitting that I saw All My Sons at the Old Vic theatre in London in the same week I finished reading Zadie Smith’s book Swing Time, as both were not unpleasant to experience, but ‘not unpleasant’ is literally all I can say about them. There was nothing gripping about either work. While I liked watching both Sally and Bill Pullman (seriously, Bill Pullman! ledge on ledge!), everyone else felt slightly (or heavily) miscast and misdirected. It felt like Arthur Miller’s classic play has aged out of relevance, and rather than feeling like a noteworthy period piece, it instead felt like a dusty relic.
Sally and Bill (I met them; we’re friends) play a married couple of an adult son. Just one son. They had another son but he died in the war (sad). Two sons is still not enough for an ‘all’, you’re correct – the title phrase reveal was one of the only creative turns of phrase in the whole script. Anyway, so the dead son (sorry) had a sweetheart when he went off to war (as they do, as they do). Ever since – three years now – the girl, Ann, has been corresponding with the other (living) (sorry) son, Chris, and THEY now want to get married. This play was written in a time when it was SUPER NORMAL for a girl whose sweetheart died in war to marry the guy’s brother instead, and that is WEIRD. Luckily, the family also thinks it’s weird, but not in a women-aren’t-property-to-be-inherited-when-a-family-member-dies-that’s-super-gross way, more in the they-don’t-actually-believe-their-son-died way.
Turns out, War Son was only reported ‘disappeared’ those three years ago, so even though all signs point to Dead, Sally (let’s just call her Sally) is making herself sick holding onto any thread of hope that her son is alive. Which you can’t really fault her for, it’s so sad. Poor sad Sally! But even WITHOUT the hope that the son is still alive, it’s still super weird to sign off on your other son marrying the fiancee. Oof.
Anyway, the girl, Ann, comes to visit the family so she and Chris can announce the engagement, and we learn about the friction between the two families that exists for reasons other than brother-swapping weirdness. Bill and Ann’s father worked together, and some shady shit went down, but only Ann’s father ended up in jail. Did her father do crimes? Or was Bill guilty but got away with it by throwing Mr. Ann under the bus? The problem with this being the main conflict is that no one cares.
The other main problem with the show is that Chris (Colin Morgan, Merlin) is miscast, and without a strong Chris to really nail all the nuance and emotional beats and relationships, it all falls apart. His choices felt off, like surprisingly off; I’m surprised at the director here. The only confident, successful directorial choice was the very opening moment, with the house moving upstage amid flashing Americana television screens. I’m disappointed that that new, confident display of this classic work wasn’t continued at any other moment.
In fact, the only emotional beat that rang true was an extraordinarily minor moment between Ann’s brother George and a super-minor-character-neighbor-lady when they acknowledged that they would have ended up together had George not gone off to army, mother. It’s like, literally the neighbor lady’s only scene, so great job making your mark, but the fact that nothing else in the entire show felt as authentic is a shame. Of course, London audiences being as insane as they are, they laughed when George declines meeting her kids, even though it’s a heartbreaking moment, but that’s CLA (crazy London audiences) for you.
While I’m sure this play was revelatory in its time, what being about the problems with profiting from war and all the emotional turmoil it causes in its wake, it felt irrelevant today. And some of the twists seemed nonsensical. When Bill Pullman yells at his son (living) in the climax, he all of a sudden asks, “Was the money the problem? You had too much money?” and I literally went, “um, weird flex”, because that was literally the most random reaction to the argument, coming out of nowhere and clearly not the issue. Everything sort of felt untethered like that, disjointed and random. Even the big reveals at the end, both about Bill’s true actions regarding the crime and the other son’s disappearance, feel incredibly unsatisfying. (They also don’t make a ton of sense on examination. If Larry (dead son) knew about the dad’s trial and potential crime, that means it was at least MONTHS since the incident/arrest, and he never once spoke to his family to hear their response or thoughts? He just assumed his father was guilty and then decided to do what he did? do not buy it.)
And yet, despite all this disappointment in the play, I think Sally (and Bill, really) did a nice job. Poor sad Sally was literally shaking the entire time, but you believed that she was a grieving mother with too many traumas to keep in their appropriate boxes, leaving everything threatening to unravel. I just didn’t think this production was strong enough for her talents.
“The Autumn of My Springtime” at Tbilisi’s Marionette Theatre
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about “The Autumn of My Springtime”, at Tbilisi, Georgia’s famed Marionette Theatre.
Well, this is a first! Puppets scare me so I haven’t really sought out puppet shows – or as the fancy people call the fancier kind, ‘marionette theatre’. But a visit to the Rezo Gabriadze Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia (not that Georgia) (unless you thought of the former-Soviet country (then you’d be right)) is one of the must-dos when visiting that city. I don’t know about you, but when I think marionette show, I think of John Cusack creepy AF in “Being John Malkovich”, a performance that still gives me nightmares because he made Malkovich’s entire life about creepy puppets?? Malko was in the og sunken place! So sad. Or I think of the ‘I got no strings to hold me down’ bit from Pinocchio and that’s equally terrifying so yeah, I’d usually say nah thanks to marionettes with their creepy faces and their creepy small but emotive hands. But now I will first think of Rezo Gabriadze’s surprisingly poignant show “The Autumn of My Springtime” and how wonderful it is. I’m not rushing out to see more scary puppets, but I fully insist that all Tbilisi visitors do.
The Gabriadze theatre performs their marionette shows in repertory, with current offerings including 4 well received plays written and directed by Rezo himself. Everyone (niche theatre reviewers) had been talking about one play in particular called “Stalingrad” which you can imagine is important in these parts so we were initially disappointed that a showing of that play didn’t line up with our free night in Tbilisi. But now I’m so glad that that show wasn’t on because the one we saw was fantastic. “The Autumn of My Springtime”, performed in Georgian with English supertitles, tells the story of an old Soviet couple, Valram and Domna, and their…pet? friend? confidante? bird named Boris. When the show begins with Boris the orange bird saying “Two things amaze me, morality and the stars”, you know shit’s gonna be interesting.
The show begins with old man Valram, a very old man indeed, talking to his bird-friend Boris about how tired his poor heart is. The puppeteers, five adults dressed in black, soon vanish into the background and you focus only on the intricate, perfectly tuned movements of the ancient doll. Anyone who has seen “Avenue Q” knows how easy it is to go from “How am I going to focus on the puppets and not stare at the human actors the entire time?” to “Omg I forgot these were puppets”. Valram’s hands lifting to gesture despite it taking all his energy was so realistic and moving that when he soon died (like five minutes in, so not a spoiler) (actually we’re going to be giving all the spoilers but odds are you aren’t seeing this so whatevs), it was quite sad.
So Boris takes it upon himself to look after Domna, the ancient wife of Valram, now that her husband is gone and she needs to pay the bills. Boris is often referred to endearingly (or maybe grammatically; it might just be a sentence structure thing but that’s less adorable) as Boria, and little Boria is all that Domna has now (though the relationship is still unclear) (as it is a bird). Domna’s mannerisms were like Valram’s, that precise articulation that makes you forget that they’re puppets. The work was so impressive. Boris the Bird’s puppeteer had a much less precise job, since the little orange shock of feathers really just had to keep fluttering the whole time, but he was onstage for most of the show and I assume that gets exhausting.
Boria sells all of Domna’s belongings to a moneylender friend to get her going, and I’m prettayyyyy sure the moneylender friend’s name was – I shit you not – SHALOM. At first I thought the dude riding the bicycle maniacally and singing about his life and money and biking was just repeatedly shouting Shalom so the audience knew he was a jew but I realized/husband told me that he was just shouting his name over and over, because that’s less weird, and that his name happened to be Shalom. Of course it was. And of course the moneylender was Jewish. Oh mild racism.
After the super random moneylender-on-a-giant-bicycle scene where I thought hmm this is kind of nutty, it went super off the rails nutty, to places I never could have imagined, yet remained, somehow, grounded in relatable humanity. The next scene featured little Boria going to the bank and talking to his friend…the statue on the door of the bank. The statue was named Dionidas, and he was in love with a girl who danced around nearby. Like a human girl, I think. He referred to her as his flora, his fauna, and Boris saw an opportunity in his friend’s love. Boris helps Dionidas the talking statue and the human lady reconcile, so the statue is supes happy and opens the doors (his torso?) and lets his birdfriend take some money from the bank. No big deal, easy as pie. The harder part is for Boria to find a way to give the money to Domna without her knowing that he robbed a bank. (Does it count as robbing if the guarding statue lets you take the money?) So he repeatedly just ‘happens’ to find oh a 25 ruble note here, a 25 ruble note there, for Domna’s benefit. When he tells her how he found each one, he begins by saying “Oh I laughed so hard, you wouldn’t believe how hard I laughed – I found this 25 ruble note in a tree/in a bucket/falling from an airplane/pinned to an accordionist’s face” (these are all real examples). Finally Domna is like “Stop lying to me ya damn bird! I know you didn’t just find this money!” but she does get all her possessions back from Shylock so she kind of doesn’t care?
There’s no time for figuring out Domna’s position on the matter though, because Boris is ready to parrrrtayyyyy. The bird (remember, this is a bird) goes to what looks like a British Christmas party with lots of drunk worker-looking men and lots of drunk women dressed like secretaries in a place that looks like a bowling alley. They forgo puppets for this scene and have mostly giant cardboard people bopping up and down. There’s a big toast Boris and the men give and this is literally what it was: “God bless Georgian heavy industry and its women with light morals!” Then Boris may have raped a woman but it was all very unclear considering that he is a bird and the woman was a gigantic cardboard cutout and before you can say ‘wait what the hell’ the cardboard cutouts of all the women lift up their skirts to show their underwear and I was like whaaaat isssss happpppening. This was by far the most random scene I’ve seen in pretty much anything ever. Also it was unnecessary; I don’t get why it was in this show, but I guess that toast was pretty good.
But things aren’t all fun and games for little Boria, because the cops may be on to him. He did rob a bank, remember? The cops – and one giant officer on a giant horse – barge into Domna’s house since she is his main known associate looking for the little ‘sky tramp’ as they amazingly call Boris. But Domna’s like ‘I haven’t seen him in a while but also I’m not his master or anything he is a wild bird who just happens to talk and do human stuff like rob banks and drink alcohol’ and the cops are like ‘well if you see him tell him he’s in big trouble mister because he robbed a bank and also he flew into a movie theatre and tried to kiss the projection of Vivian Leigh and ended up poking holes in the screen (this is a real thing they said) and also he is causing all kinds of problems and ruckus and the people are outraged because they hate sky tramps and we need to arrest him’ and despite Boris being the only friend she has in the world, Domna doesn’t really seem too broken up about it, but I guess that’s that Soviet external show of strength that babushkas pride themselves on.
Meanwhile, Boris is out flying by the window of a woman named Ninel, yes a human woman whom he is in love with. And she’s in love with him. We learn from their conversation that they fell in love in middle school (???) when she was trying to learn and he was flapping outside the window distracting her and now they can’t be together and they bemoan the fact by talking shit about Charles Darwin. I’m not kidding. Boria yells “Damn you Charles Darwin and your ape ancestors!” and Ninel cries “What did Charles Darwin ever know about love” and we were kicking each other so hard.
But unfortunately, the cops find Boris and trap him in a bucket (“anything but the bucket!” Boris screams) and he goes to jail, the awful kind where he has to wear black and white striped clothes on his tiny bird body and it’s kind of hilarious. Domna makes the arduous climb to visit him and despite her stern demeanor she shows how much she cares in their conversation about how he’s holding up. And in this exchange comes my favorite line in the whole thing that made me laugh so hard in a quiet theatre where no one else thought this was a particularly funny line but I was there CACKLING. Domna inquires about the conditions and, wanting to protect his health from the outside chill, she tells Boris: “Ask the other prisoners if you can change beds, farther from the window – tell them that you’re sick, say you’re a bird…” SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! HAHAHAHAH I was struggling not to scream-laugh. Like I’m p sure they’d know he was a bird from the start but I loveeee using that as an excuse.
Domna’s little peasant life is rocked quite a bit from the scandal, and she tries to avoid the prying eyes and unwelcome comments from nosy neighbors. But she can’t get away from one such neighbor, a very bad man who corners her and comments on Boris: “If he had raped someone, say a sparrow, or a pigeon, or a nightingale, I would have defended him, saying it was a crime of passion. But stealing money from the communal funds is unforgivable.” Man aliiive this is some commie bullshit! It reminded me of a North Korean movie I once saw that repeated lines like “all praise our great leader for allowing this” and “we are all important parts of the machine that makes our great country turn” or whatever crap like that from dictatorships. Yeesh.
Anyway, the day of Boris’s trial arrives, and since he’s hundo p guilty the big decision is whether Domna should be punished as an accomplice. Boria is adamant that his friend is innocent, even though she benefited from his crime, because she didn’t know and she’s just a poor old lady who will die soon anyway. The prosecutor is really mean and scary but luckily the judge – a GIGANTIC cardboard cutout of an old man in a double-breasted cardigan, because that’s what judges wear while sitting on the bench in any country – lets Domna go. Boris is sentenced to a life spent in a window display in a hunter’s shop, which is RULL disturbing but I guess better than the gulag? Boris asks for permission to give a speech before beginning his sentence and the judge allows it, and the speech he wanted to give was just to scream his lungs out at the mean prosecutor and it was SPELL-BINDING. The best part by far was when Boris A BIRD yells at him “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” true story!
Okay I know I’ve shared all absolutely ridiculous or hilarious bits of this play and you’re probably thinking ‘um didn’t you say that this was moving and poignant” and it really was despite well everything I’ve been talking about. Through all the jokes and things I found to be funny even if they weren’t jokes, they were telling the story of a woman who had no hope in the world except this friend, who risked and gave up everything to help her survive. And to top that all off, he wasn’t human, yet he was the only one to show some humanity. And then he got kind of out of control and broke tons of laws but isn’t that the most human part of all? The ending packed a punch, with Boria in his shop window, passing his time, when the officer comes to visit and tells him to go mourn for Domna because no one else is. Yes, Domna has died, and Boris needs to pay his respects at her grave, which is next to Valram’s, where we began. Boris, however, is shot when he approaches – whether randomly, or by the hunter whose shop he sits in, or by the cops who may have set him up, it’s unclear (I’m going with the cops though) – and he struggles with all his might to make it atop his friends’ graves before his body gives out. It’s pretty dire, heartbreaking, as he makes it to his resting place with the people he cared about most. Boris says some deep stuff about humanity in his final moments as well as throughout the show, and despite being a bird, he nails the injustice and the sadness and the need for someone to care about you. And it’s quite lovely. AND he gives us incredible quotes that we’ve been shouting all week like SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! and “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” Anyway, go see puppet shows if you are ever in Tbilisi. Amazing work, Rezo.
AUDIENCE
All Russian tourists who were pretty okay, although we prepped for it to be the worst audience ever since it was a tourist thing so anything better than that was a nice surprise.
THEATRE
The theatre is a semi-small single room upstairs from the nice wooden lobby. There are only two bathroom stalls but that wasn’t a problem for me because I had THE BEST SEAT and you need to get it if you go – B1. The second row, but the first seat on that aisle for some reason sticks much further out that all the other rows so I was closest to the door! Heyoooo! They also had this amazing No Cell Phone symbol in the corner of the ceiling, which I believe every single theatre should have.
Lobby
best seat ever
best sign ever
