"Tongue of a Bird:" Tales of Searching

I am a huge fan of Black Box productions at New Rep, and the intimacy afforded by the space is the perfect atmosphere for the personal histories and emotional performances of “Tongue of a Bird.”  The play tells the story of Maxine (Elizabeth Anne Rimar), a search and rescue pilot in the Adirondacks, commissioned by a distraught mother to find her missing daughter.  In the midst of her search, the pilot confronts her own childhood loss.  The production is almost a series of monologues, each one helping the audience to more fully comprehend what it is to lose everything and what it means to let go.

The five-person cast of “Tongue of a Bird” is without exception spectacular.  Bobbie Steinbach (Zofia) reminded me so much of my own Polish grandmother, that I spent most of her performance lost in nostalgia.  Olivia D’Ambrosio (Evie) was flawless as Maxine’s mother.  She speaks exuberantly, seemingly without breathing.  The tone of her voice instead changes to signal a new thought or idea.  Her eyes, however, constantly have a fearful expression, as if, any moment, she might crash again.  Ilyse Robbins’s character (Dessa, the distraught mother) also projects the idea of fighting not to slip away.  She clings desperately to the idea of her daughter’s survival, recalling the exact blue of her coat and the fried chicken and peas dinner they shared.  Her speech also borders on manic, one sentence rambling into the next, fighting to imagine her daughter back into existence.  As the missing girl, Claudia Q. Nolan (Charlotte) is haunting as she delivers her mocking threats to Maxine.

Maxine’s character is arguably the most complex.  She is an interesting contrast to all of her other co-stars: calm next to Dessa’s anguish, pragmatic next to her grandmother’s stories of bears and witches, and solid next to her mother’s flighty ghost.  She has the most to lose, and at the end of the performance, the audience feels the weight of it all.

--Victoria Petrosino, New Rep Reviewer

“Tongue of a Bird” Emotional, Intense

A black box production allows a company to experiment with the form and substance of a theatrical work, and this setting is ideal for New Rep’s wonderful “Tongue of a Bird.”  The theatrical action happens on what ends up looking (appropriately) like a narrow airstrip of a stage, with half of the audience on either side.  The script (by Ellen McLaughlin), which is largely the musings of the protagonist (Maxine, expertly portrayed by Elizabeth Anne Rimar), heightens the feeling of being inside her search-and-rescue plane, and sometimes inside her head, along with the lost girl she seeks and her own long-deceased mother. 

The result is an extremely intimate and powerful production.  It is a good thing the actors are so compelling, because the closeness verges on claustrophobia, but is constantly rescued by the breathtaking performances.  In particular, New Rep favorite Bobbie Steinbach shines as Maxine’s extremely pragmatic grandmother, Zofia, who is solid as the earth in the face of her flight-bound progeny.  The missing child, Charlotte (portrayed with zest by Claudina Nolan), is spirited and sassy, and her youthful exuberance makes a painful contrast with the painful adult world of the other characters.  The two mothers (Charlotte’s desperate searching mom, Dessa, and pilot Maxine’s own mother’s ghost, Evie) are a study in contrasts.  Dessa (Ilyse Robbins) is mournful and emotionally laden – heavy, full of pain.  Evie (Olivia D’Ambrosio), on the other hand, is bright-eyed, fun-loving, and so manic that she clearly lived several feet off the ground all the time, finally snapping the cord that tethered her to this world. 

At the center of it all, Maxine struggles to make sense of it all, to pull together the heavy pain and the love of flying, and does her best – which is all we can ever do.  The play is raw, touching, and deeply human.  It is well worth seeing.

~ Shauna Shames, New Rep Reviewer