Theatre review: The Search Party's Stupid F*cking Bird is a razor-sharp, F-bomb-laced takedown of love and artistic pretension
Lots.of laughter, and some tragedy, as a strong ensemble cast brings to life lovelorn characters who are all too aware they’re in a play
Kerry Sandomirsky’s Emma and Nathan Kay’s tormented playwright Conrad in Stupid F*cking Bird. Photo by Emily Cooper
The Cultch presents The Search Party’s Stupid F*cking Bird at the Historic Theatre until April 23
AS A BITINGLY irreverent update of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, featuring not only a tortured playwright but two actors as main characters, Stupid Fucking Bird is going to appeal to those who love theatre. But here’s guessing The Search Party production is also going to wildly entertain those who hate theatre—including those who actually love to hate it—and its earnest pretensions. And yet the play simultaneously shows how and why theatre can still find the “new forms” Chekhov longed for.
In American playwright Aaron Posner’s ruthless, F-bomb-laced takedown, staged with razor-sharp wit by its ensemble cast, everyone knows they’re in a play—or at least “a performance or whatever”—and they’re quick to point out its affectations.
The setup hones closely to that of Chekhov’s original 1895 work. Self-flagellating director-playwright Conrad (Nathan Kay) has joined an extended group, including his famed and overbearing actor mother Emma (Kerry Sandomirsky), at a summer house. In the back yard, Con stages an absurd site-specific performance piece, starring the young actor Nina (Baraka Rahmani), who he’s obsessed with. Aimed at ripping apart the theatre conventions of the older generation, the play-within-a-play manages to quickly insult the haughty and narcissistic matriarch in the process. (Like The Seagull, Stupid Fucking Bird emphasizes the conflict between generations.)
More tensions arise, mostly due to the plethora of love triangles—or, more accurately, unrequited-love triangles: “bit of a boob” Dev (Anton Lipovetsky) is in love with sulky Mash (Emma Slipp), who’s attracted to Conrad, who pines for Nina, who lusts for celebrated novelist Trig (Jesse Lipscombe), who just happens to be the boyfriend Emma has brought along for the retreat.
Observing all of the shenanigans is the aging and mildly bemused doctor Sorn (Kevin McNulty), remarking on the sheer quantity of feelings ricocheting around the place.
McNulty helps make Sorn one of the most compelling characters in a strong ensemble cast—and definitely the most likable one. “Would you like a LifeSaver?” he says, offering one of the candies to a character who’s just unleashed a torrid outpouring of angst. But in Posner’s script, Sorn slowly reveals his own conflicted depth: in one masterful scene, the doctor mixes a vintage cocktail, soaking a sugar cube in angostura bitters and pontificating on how no one knows him. As someone focused on helping others, he’s never emitted an honest emotion of his own.
The other outsider is equally strong: Lipovetsky builds unexpected depth into oblivious, ukulele-playing Dev. In one self-consciously theatrical scene at the end of Act 1, the performers line up and face the audience to express a looping laundry list of desires. For Dev, happiness is not esoteric notions of love or art, but “a bottomless bowl of ice cream”.
Sandomirsky is suitably arch and affected as capital-A Actor Emma, but where she really shows her stuff is in a late, sobering confrontation with the skirt-chasing Trig. Finding brutal honesty, maturity, and despair under the rage, here’s an adult woman directly schooling an adult man on why boys can’t be boys—and it’s withering. You suddenly feel empathy for her, too.
The ensemble of Stupid Fucking Bird lines up to list off their desires. Photo by Emily Cooper
As Con, Kay commits to the character’s furious ball of neuroses, self-absorbed to the point he doesn’t even notice when his beloved Nina shows him the beauty of a seagull flying above. He is particularly adept at switching gears to address the audience, making the numerous asides feel natural and fluid—asking right off the top for someone in the crowd to holler “Start the fucking play!” for the show to begin. Elsewhere, Slipp’s Mash is beautifully miserable, and Lipscombe’s Trig is conflicted and flawed beneath his faux-humble arrogance. As for Rahmani, she hints nicely at the raw ambition, and attraction to Trig’s fame, that underlie Nina’s fresh, youthful naivetee; yes, she’s treated like an object, but perhaps it’s because theatre demands that of young female actors—something Emma, who derides her (jealously?), presumably knows all too well.
Amir Ofek’s expressive set is filled with Chekhov-nodding 19th-century furniture, draped with covers, where the actors sit, metatheatrically “offstage”, in full view when they’re not performing. One decorative chair sits uncovered at centre stage, an ominous bullet hole blasted through its silk tapestry. More stylized productions, integrating pop music and surrealistic set touches, have been staged across America over the years, but director Mindy Parfitt makes an effective choice to emphasize the ensemble acting—though there is a lovely, winking dump of fall leaves in the first act.
For all the laughs—and there are many in this show, especially in interactions with the audience—the ending edges ever more into the tragic, Posner at his clever best in honouring, upending, and playing with The Seagull’s famous finale. Kay works himself into a one-man maelstrom as a person for whom even theatrical success can’t bring happiness.
Art and love are torment, Posner suggests in his final dark joke. It may ultimately be wiser to opt for ice cream—or just suck on a LifeSaver. Or better yet, like Sorn, sip on a strong, lovingly made cocktail and take in the theatre of life as a spectator.
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