“My Name is Lucy Barton”: Laura Linney Makes a Stunning London Debutby Randi / June 21, 2018
It’s…not Theatre Thursday, but this production closes on Broadway today and I didn’t realize.
Joe Mantello is a magician. Not a director, not an actor, a magician. Everything I’ve seen him do, whether it be acting or directing (okay, he is an actor and a director), is flawless, and his direction of the latest revival of “Three Tall Women” is that again, plus all the other superlatives you could think of. Of course, Joey M had the benefit of directing some of the best actresses of the modern age, as well as the rich source material of this challenging, thrilling play. I was unfamiliar with this particular Edward Albee classic, but I am happy to say that it continued the trend of my enjoying and appreciating Albee’s plays, which is a nice change of pace from my reactions to other playwright kings (*cough* Pinter *cough* Mamet*). I bought tickets to TTW superfast because Glenda Jackson, the closest you can get to royalty without being royal, was making her big return to Broadway after her amazing life of winning two Oscars, playing King Lear in London, and…serving in Parliament for more than twenty years. I had to go see the f-ing thing!
Joe Mantello is a magician. Not a director, not an actor, a magician. Everything I’ve seen him do, whether it be acting or directing (okay, he is an actor and a director), is flawless, and his direction of the latest revival of “Three Tall Women” is that again, plus all the other superlatives you could think of. Of course, Joey M had the benefit of directing some of the best actresses of the modern age, as well as the rich source material of this challenging, thrilling play. I was unfamiliar with this particular Edward Albee classic, but I am happy to say that it continued the trend of my enjoying and appreciating Albee’s plays, which is a nice change of pace from my reactions to other playwright kings (*cough* Pinter *cough* Mamet*). I bought tickets to TTW superfast because Glenda Jackson, the closest you can get to royalty without being royal, was making her big return to Broadway after her amazing life of winning two Oscars, playing King Lear in London, and…serving in Parliament for more than twenty years. I had to go see the f-ing thing!
The other Two Tall Women were played by Alison Pill, who I like, and Laurie Metcalf, who I would probably engage in sword fight to protect. I’ve been lucky enough to see her onstage several times and every time, she’s Streeping it up like nothing you ever imagined. Those Steppenwolf actors really know how to make characters come alive. She’s in her Tony-winning element here, hilarious in the first scene and given the meatiest dramatic monologues in the second, and although her Tony was an upset over Denise Gough in “Angels in America”, it was so deserved.
So, this play is Albee’s answer to the question of what goes through your mind when you face the moment of death, and it’s the most unique answer I’ve ever heard. It also deals with the inevitability of fate and how much it sucks to be old and how much you change as you grow old and how funny and heartbreaking Laurie Metcalf can be in the span of a few minutes. Well that last part’s not what the play is about but that’s what happens. The play is about a 92-year-old woman (played by Glenda) who is, well, 92. She old for the earth. But she’s hella fancy, and even though she’s ancient and frail, you can tell she’s rich and still able to exude a touch of the glamour she certainly had in spades years ago. She’s in her well-appointed bedroom with her strong, candid caretaker lady (Metcalf) who has the driest sense of humor and manages to make even her lines about how often the old lady pees the bed hilarious. She says that the lady’s daily doing-so is just her greeting to the day, and her delivery is, like gum, perfection.
These Two Tall Women have their regular routine disrupted by a young lawyer (Alison Pill) from the firm that handles the old lady’s finances. The youngen (the Third Tall Woman) is understandably frustrated, since the lady never returns the documents they send or keeps track of her paperwork. It’s a mess handling her money, and the lawyer grows ever more impatient with her task as the lady repeats hazy memories of her childhood in various ways instead of answering questions. The lawyer’s irritation is with the lady personally and with what happens to the mind of the elderly in general, and Metcalf’s caretaker is irritated by the lawyer’s irritation and she tries to get her to stop fighting them and accept that this is what happens when you get old. The three of them trade barbs amid Glenda’s stories, mainly about her sister and her mother, who, we are told repeatedly except when it is transferred to stories about her father, was ‘strict but fair.’
Glenda is a force in this role, which seems like it was written especially for her. Not only did she win the Tony, she won this year’s Distinguished Performance award from the Drama League, which is my favorite award of the year because only one performer gets it – no male/female, lead/supporting bullshit, ONE performance. And there was no question that she was winning it. Seeing her perform was an honor. Her rapport with Laurie’s straight-talking character is lovely in its candor and kindness, as Laurie helps steer her many stories forward but never by correcting her many mistakes. It’s clear Laurie has dealt with this for a long time and knows it’s best to let Glenda think she remembers her life accurately. The interaction between these two actors is that of masters, and Alison holds her on when thrown in there as well. You’ll notice I’m not using character names – they don’t have them. In the play, they’re listed simply as A, B, and C. Despite being specific women in this first scene, the nameless thing makes sense because they are such archetypes of their ages – the older lady who has been through it all, seen it all, and is getting it all kind of confused, and who demands to be placated by the younger women; the middle-aged woman steeped in the inevitability and effects of aging and thus resigned to the fact that we’re ‘dying from the day we’re born’; and the hotheaded, intolerant youth who thinks she knows more than everyone. In Scene 2 (the play is in two halves but I can’t say Act I or Act II because there’s no intermission, and I had to pee badly but it really was for the best, pacing-wise), the specific-yet-general form of their characters becomes even more meaningful, as they continue to fight about stages of life but with more emotional impact.
At the end of Scene 1, Glenda’s character has a heart attack or a stroke, some kind of serious incident, and the lights go out. After a pause, the lights rise, and Glenda is lying in the bed, which is now turned so her head is closest to us and the whole thing pushed farther away from us upstage, separated from the audience by a plexiglass/mirror barrier. Is she dead? Dying? Her hand flutters a bit, her head moves every now and then, so she’s not dead yet. But then all Three Tall Women – Glenda included – burst into the room. Our side of the room, which looks like it did before, only now we’re on this side of the transparent barrier, so we can all see Glenda, or whoever it is, lying in that bed like a one-sided reflection. They’re all dressed up like they just came from a fancy cocktail party, and much friendlier and more comfortable with each other than they were before. Who ARE these people, I wondered for a minute before it became clear.
Listen, I know I spoil pretty much everything I write about, but the moment in the beginning of Scene 2 when I realized what was happening, I gasped. I had no inkling what the central conceit was, or that there even was one. And I was not familiar with this play at all. Even though this production, this flawless, magical production, is closing today, it’s still a freaking Albee classic so there is a good chance you will get the chance to see it one day. And if you do, and you don’t already know what it’s about, I don’t want to spoil this realization for you because it was astounding. Everything made so much more sense and it was almost overwhelming how brilliantly it all played out. It’s absolute genius that struck me in a way few plays ever are able to.
Of course no set design this year can compare with the actual magic happening at the Harry Potter theatre, but part of me was wishing for this to win the Tony for set design, because that plexiglass barrier is so much more than meets the eye. The barrier between the two versions of that bedroom and what they, and the barrier itself, represent, was clever stage magic of the old school variety. How they managed to get certain things to reflect on themselves wherever the mirror was while others – namely, the three women – did not, I will never understand. And it’s ironic, because that’s all the three women do while in this antechamber version of the room: reflect on themselves. The only thing more astonishing that the central concept and how well it’s reinforced, and the incredibly nuanced expert acting, and the staging, and the directing, and everything, is the very last moment, which thank god is followed by the blackout because it rips you apart with its genius. Similar in nature to the final moment of “Hamilton”, it brings everything about the play together in one simple, sad, sweet act, and I gasped again so hard it was like a scream. So without saying anything more, we can simply say that this production forked me up big time. If I had one play-related wish to make, it would be that this was recorded for the Lincoln Center archives and that they decide to let PBS air it so everyone’s lives can be so enriched.
INFORMATION
I mean it’s closing today. If PBS doesn’t air it, get a NYC library card and then join the waitlist to watch it at Lincoln Center archives. Worth it.
STAGE DOOR
I saw a matinee so only Alison Pill came out. Honestly I don’t know what I’d think of the world if it was one where Glenda Jackson stage-doored.
So, this play is Albee’s answer to the question of what goes through your mind when you face the moment of death, and it’s the most unique answer I’ve ever heard. It also deals with the inevitability of fate and how much it sucks to be old and how much you change as you grow old and how funny and heartbreaking Laurie Metcalf can be in the span of a few minutes. Well that last part’s not what the play is about but that’s what happens. The play is about a 92-year-old woman (played by Glenda) who is, well, 92. She old for the earth. But she’s hella fancy, and even though she’s ancient and frail, you can tell she’s rich and still able to exude a touch of the glamour she certainly had in spades years ago. She’s in her well-appointed bedroom with her strong, candid caretaker lady (Metcalf) who has the driest sense of humor and manages to make even her lines about how often the old lady pees the bed hilarious. She says that the lady’s daily doing-so is just her greeting to the day, and her delivery is, like gum, perfection.
These Two Tall Women have their regular routine disrupted by a young lawyer (Alison Pill) from the firm that handles the old lady’s finances. The youngen (the Third Tall Woman) is understandably frustrated, since the lady never returns the documents they send or keeps track of her paperwork. It’s a mess handling her money, and the lawyer grows ever more impatient with her task as the lady repeats hazy memories of her childhood in various ways instead of answering questions. The lawyer’s irritation is with the lady personally and with what happens to the mind of the elderly in general, and Metcalf’s caretaker is irritated by the lawyer’s irritation and she tries to get her to stop fighting them and accept that this is what happens when you get old. The three of them trade barbs amid Glenda’s stories, mainly about her sister and her mother, who, we are told repeatedly except when it is transferred to stories about her father, was ‘strict but fair.’
Glenda is a force in this role, which seems like it was written especially for her. Not only did she win the Tony, she won this year’s Distinguished Performance award from the Drama League, which is my favorite award of the year because only one performer gets it – no male/female, lead/supporting bullshit, ONE performance. And there was no question that she was winning it. Seeing her perform was an honor. Her rapport with Laurie’s straight-talking character is lovely in its candor and kindness, as Laurie helps steer her many stories forward but never by correcting her many mistakes. It’s clear Laurie has dealt with this for a long time and knows it’s best to let Glenda think she remembers her life accurately. The interaction between these two actors is that of masters, and Alison holds her on when thrown in there as well. You’ll notice I’m not using character names – they don’t have them. In the play, they’re listed simply as A, B, and C. Despite being specific women in this first scene, the nameless thing makes sense because they are such archetypes of their ages – the older lady who has been through it all, seen it all, and is getting it all kind of confused, and who demands to be placated by the younger women; the middle-aged woman steeped in the inevitability and effects of aging and thus resigned to the fact that we’re ‘dying from the day we’re born’; and the hotheaded, intolerant youth who thinks she knows more than everyone. In Scene 2 (the play is in two halves but I can’t say Act I or Act II because there’s no intermission, and I had to pee badly but it really was for the best, pacing-wise), the specific-yet-general form of their characters becomes even more meaningful, as they continue to fight about stages of life but with more emotional impact.
At the end of Scene 1, Glenda’s character has a heart attack or a stroke, some kind of serious incident, and the lights go out. After a pause, the lights rise, and Glenda is lying in the bed, which is now turned so her head is closest to us and the whole thing pushed farther away from us upstage, separated from the audience by a plexiglass/mirror barrier. Is she dead? Dying? Her hand flutters a bit, her head moves every now and then, so she’s not dead yet. But then all Three Tall Women – Glenda included – burst into the room. Our side of the room, which looks like it did before, only now we’re on this side of the transparent barrier, so we can all see Glenda, or whoever it is, lying in that bed like a one-sided reflection. They’re all dressed up like they just came from a fancy cocktail party, and much friendlier and more comfortable with each other than they were before. Who ARE these people, I wondered for a minute before it became clear.
Listen, I know I spoil pretty much everything I write about, but the moment in the beginning of Scene 2 when I realized what was happening, I gasped. I had no inkling what the central conceit was, or that there even was one. And I was not familiar with this play at all. Even though this production, this flawless, magical production, is closing today, it’s still a freaking Albee classic so there is a good chance you will get the chance to see it one day. And if you do, and you don’t already know what it’s about, I don’t want to spoil this realization for you because it was astounding. Everything made so much more sense and it was almost overwhelming how brilliantly it all played out. It’s absolute genius that struck me in a way few plays ever are able to.
Of course no set design this year can compare with the actual magic happening at the Harry Potter theatre, but part of me was wishing for this to win the Tony for set design, because that plexiglass barrier is so much more than meets the eye. The barrier between the two versions of that bedroom and what they, and the barrier itself, represent, was clever stage magic of the old school variety. How they managed to get certain things to reflect on themselves wherever the mirror was while others – namely, the three women – did not, I will never understand. And it’s ironic, because that’s all the three women do while in this antechamber version of the room: reflect on themselves. The only thing more astonishing that the central concept and how well it’s reinforced, and the incredibly nuanced expert acting, and the staging, and the directing, and everything, is the very last moment, which thank god is followed by the blackout because it rips you apart with its genius. Similar in nature to the final moment of “Hamilton”, it brings everything about the play together in one simple, sad, sweet act, and I gasped again so hard it was like a scream. So without saying anything more, we can simply say that this production forked me up big time. If I had one play-related wish to make, it would be that this was recorded for the Lincoln Center archives and that they decide to let PBS air it so everyone’s lives can be so enriched.
INFORMATION
I mean it’s closing today. If PBS doesn’t air it, get a NYC library card and then join the waitlist to watch it at Lincoln Center archives. Worth it.
STAGE DOOR
I saw a matinee so only Alison Pill came out. Honestly I don’t know what I’d think of the world if it was one where Glenda Jackson stage-doored.
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Sharon D. Clarke is in Blues in the Night & That’s Probably All You Need to Know
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Blues in the Night, playing at London’s Kiln Theatre in Kilburn until September 7.
Before we get into specifics about this revue-style show, I need to share two things. First, Husbo & I went to a cheeky weekday matinee so we were ready for the old-white-people chatterboxing that comes with the territory. But the show opens with a single musician in spotlight playing the saxophone, and as soon as he blared out one strong note, an old lady not close to me said at full volume “oh you know I love the sax”. I mean. We were not ready for that. We were in for quite an experience. Old biddies LOVE THEM SOME TALKING.
The second thing is that whenever I say/think/type this title, my head goes “blues is in the niiiii-iii-ii-ii-ight, blues is in the niiiii-iii-ii-ii-ight” like “Groove is in the heart” you get it. Okay I guess I didn’t *need* to share that.
Blues in the Night is a 1980s revue of bluesy standards from well before then (mostly Bessie Smith, like at least half). It “takes place” in 1938 in a run-down Chicago hotel, and it’s “about” three down-on-their-luck women – one older, one middle I guess, and one younger – and one man. The previous phrases suggesting there’s a story are in quotes because this is a revue, like Ain’t Misbehavin, that does not have a story. But unlike the enjoyable Ain’t Misbehavin, in which they were cool just putting on a killer fun show and accepting that there was no story or characters, Blues does attempt to establish characters and a whisper-thin outline of a background story, but that makes it even more obvious that there is none and kind of awkwardly cringey when they do weird ‘character things’.
I looked on the wikipedia page for some info and it says Blues is actually about these three women and the one “snake of a man” who has screwed them all over. I did NOT get that. The one man, Clive Rowe, seemed more to just be filling a role of ‘man’ in each song when needed, not that he was actually the man involved with these three women. It doesn’t make sense to me that he would have a sexual history with the three of them because, I don’t know how to say this nicely but he doesn’t exactly scream ‘womanizer’. I think we can chalk him up to being miscast if that’s what they were trying to go for (his singing was fine), along with the youngest woman, Gemma Sutton, who I loved in The Rink but is wrong here since her character’s songs simply do not fit her voice.
As for the other half of the cast, they acquit themselves more successfully but are also given weird things to do to establish some semblance of a character instead of just being allowed to sing the damn songs. Debbie Kurup, who we last saw in Sweet Charity, plays the middle woman who apparently has a fancy past but is now struggling living in this hotel and sings various songs about her fancy past and current troubles, as they all do. But like, I think at one point she was in the background doing heroin??? I mean, why? There’s no story! That is very unnecessary! And then she sells her fur coat to a waiter? Just why.
And that brings us to the fourth member of this cast, the great Sharon D. Clarke, probably the greatest West End musical theatre actress right now. The show is worth seeing just to hear her sing a super long depressing version of Bessie Smith’s “Wasted Life Blues”, so incredibly moving and fantastic that I could easily have murdered the two old men whose obnoxious ringtones blasted out during it (one even got up from the front to take his call I CANNOT). While Clarke seems to be enjoying herself and is, as always, killing it, they also have her do some ridiculous,unnecessary ‘character-building’ stuff like singing an entire song with food-based double entendres (does it count as a double entendre if it’s as obvious and unsophisticated as repeatedly joking about a man’s sausage?) and fanning her hoo-ha that it made me uncomfortable to look directly at her. I wish this show was either an actual story or just a straightforward review of good songs instead of being in some weird nether region.
This show, awkward as it is, was actually nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical – but it was a weak year. I mean Cats won.
Although it was pretty slow at times and pretty heavy on the fremdschamen, Blues has some good musical moments, namely whenever Clarke gets a non-sausagey solo (that “Wasted Life Blues” deserves its own show, with a real story and a real character for her to play, it was that good) and whether the four cast members join together in a number, like in the exciting title song. Fun fact, that song, “Blues in the Night”, was nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar in 1942, along with “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. People expected one of those two to win, but Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammy Dos surprised everyone with a win for “The Last Time I Saw Paris”. Even funner fact, Kern was kinda pissed that he won an Oscar for a song that wasn’t written specifically for the movie it was in so he had the rules changed! He changed the Academy Award rules for original songs (they must be written specifically for the movie) because he was so mad he won one. I mean. That’s more interesting than anything in this show, I hate to say.
INFORMATION
Blues in the Night is playing at the Kiln Theatre until September 7. It’s a two-act, of 50 minutes each, 20 minute interval. I think there are enough clunkers that could be cut that it could be a one-act 80 minute show if they had the power to change it. Or just have a Sharon concert, really. But it’s worth catching her if you’re a fan before Broadway steals and keeps her.
AUDIENCE
I can’t even describe how much they were all talking and at full volume. Man alive they love to talk. One guy around us was humming along to the songs and man I get that these are your jams from childhood but the least you could do is hum in the right key.
“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
