Chekhov’s ‘Seagull’ Acquires New Wings ‘Stupid _______ Bird’ Returns to Woolly Mammoth Theater
Charles IsherwoodAugust 4, 2014: The expletive smacked splat in the middle of the title indicates clearly that Aaron Posner will be playing fast and loose with the vaunted delicacies of Chekhov in his play Stupid ______ Bird, which is being remounted for a summer run at the Woolly Mammoth Theater after debuting there to acclaim last year and winning the Helen Hayes Award for best new play. And yet, for all its rowdiness, Mr. Posner’s bitingly funny, bruisingly sad “sort of” adaptation of The Seagull comes closer than many productions of the original to capturing the full complexity of feeling in the play. Mr. Posner turns a classic often treated with reverence into a mirror that shows in crisp detail what is new about unhappiness today (we obsess about it a lot more), and what is timeless (love screws you up, life’s a bitch, and then, well, you know). The stereotypical Chekhov is depicted as a gentle master of nuance with a compassionate vision of human foibles — and there is much truth in this assessment. But scratch a little deeper and you’ll see how desperate his characters can be to escape the constrictions of their existence, how violently they love (in vain, of course), how mercilessly they rend their own hearts in the anguish of disappointment. All of this comes through with piercing vitality in Mr. Posner’s adaptation, which moves between fidelity to the original and spasms of self-conscious theatricality with the ease of a competitive skateboarder.
READ THE REVIEW