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
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