Jennifer Chung Klam

San Diego Arts

Stone Soup Theatre's "Tongue of a Bird"

By Jennifer Chung Klam
Posted on Sat, Apr 1st, 2006
Last updated Tue, Apr 18th, 2006

Near the beginning of Stone Soup Theatre’s alluring production of “Tongue of a Bird,” an elderly woman tells her granddaughter that a bird had flown down the chimney and gotten stuck in the house, flapping its sooty wings all over the walls in a disoriented, frantic attempt at freedom.

It’s a striking metaphor for the play’s themes of madness, flight and confinement, also reflected in Nick Fouch’s simplistic and appealing set design. Director Esther Emery lends her delicate touch and eye for imagery, but this first offering of Stone Soup’s 2006 season is a little like that trapped bird – unable to escape the limitations of Ellen McLaughlin’s flawed play.

Wendy Waddell (sitting) and

JulieAnderson Sachs.

Photo by Kevin Lock

The story concerns Maxine, a search and rescue pilot looking for a 12-year-old who went missing in the same mountain region where the aviator spent her unhappy childhood. Temporarily staying at the home of her Polish grandmother who raised her, Maxine is compelled to retrace the childhood emotions that keep her circling the world from above, searching for lost things down below.

Maxine is also searching for her own mother, lost to madness and suicide. In her parallel pursuits, Maxine conjures the ghosts or mental images or dreams or memories – the ambiguity and mystery are part of the intrigue – of her own mother and the lost girl. The grandmother is little help in sorting out the details of Maxine’s mother’s death, wanting to forget (or banish) the past as much as Maxine yearns to discover it.

It’s a premise that McLaughlin spins into a lyrical meditation on birds and flight, memory and loss, madness and death, and mother-daughter relationships – rich fields to mine, and ripe metaphors to beat nearly to death. Birds figure into much of the text, Maxine’s “landing” becomes symbolic of her confrontation with reality and her own memories, and her grandmother’s “flight” is representative of eventual death.

The language is poetic. Emery’s vision is equally graceful, and this quintet of actresses does well with the talkiness of the play. But the characters’ lengthy and numerous monologues are too full of the kind of affected language that pops you right out of the story.

Julie Anderson Sachs, as Maxine, got off to a bumpy start on opening night. She seemed unsure and rushed some lines. As the play progressed Sachs dug into the character, finding Maxine’s toughness hiding vulnerability, but her credibility in the role was already shaken.

Wendy Waddell offers a powerful performance. Her Dessa is frantic, raging and nearly out of her head with madness – the perfect portrayal of an anguished mother searching for her missing child, desperately clinging to the unlikely scenario that she is still alive.

June Gottleib plays the grandmother with feistiness and a bit of old-world hocus pocus, while young Abbey Howe delivers a fine performance as the missing girl who prods Maxine and shrewdly stabs at her motivations.

Robin Christ as Evie as Amelia Earhart.

Photo by Kevin Lock

Robin Christ is well cast in the role of Maxine’s deceased mother. She balances Evie’s loopiness with moments of tender, motherly lucidity, culminating in a final scene where she removes the veil of mystery, fantasies, false imaginings and Amelia Earhart garb that Maxine has placed upon her.

The play apparently calls for Evie to be strung up on a wire, to float ethereally above her daughter’s bed. Whether out of budget constraints or just good judgment, Emery simply places Christ on a loft above the stage, where she lolls about, flaps her arms, skulks and balances herself in various positions atop a single wooden chair. It’s perhaps more effective (and less cheesy) than a bird on a wire in demonstrating Evie’s mental instability and persistent presence in her daughter’s consciousness.

Fouch’s set uses this loft space to represent the attic, with wooden rafters that also recall a giant cage. Valerie Breyne’s moody lighting complements the sparse stage, with a vibrant blue backdrop and a visual crescendo to match the play’s final moments.

In the end this is what we are left with – a few scattered though lovely images, some from the poetic script and some owing to Stone Soup’s talented cast and production team. But there isn’t enough drama, action or story in McLaughlin’s play to interest us beyond the final curtain.

View the program.

About the author: Jennifer Chung Klam is an editor at The Daily Transcript and a freelance arts and culture writer.
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