Review: Don't Judge! Do Go See STUPID F**KING BIRD at Portland Center Stage

In Chekov's THE SEAGULL, writer Constantin Treplev says: "We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we had better have nothing." And, with THE SEAGULL, the first of his four great plays, Chekov did indeed introduce a new form of theatre -- one that replaced the melodrama popular at the time with realism. Chekov's characters were real people, having real conversations, and doing real things. It wasn't always successful in his time (read about it in the STUPID F**KING BIRD Playbill), but it had a huge impact on theatre.

Fast-forward 120 years and we have Aaron Posner's STUPID F**KING BIRD, which isn't an adaptation of THE SEAGULL so much as a new form of it. The main plot and characters are basically the same, and, true to Chekov's intentions, it's definitely a comedy. But STUPID F**KING BIRD is much more meta.

Essentially what Posner does is introduce an even greater sense of realism by smashing through the fourth wall and having characters who are aware that they are fictional. They talk to the audience, sometimes in soliloquy, sometimes in song. For example, Conrad, the STUPID F**KING BIRD version of Treplev, wonders whether the play will change the audience in any way or whether we'll just turn on our cellphones and get back to our lives. This meta-theatrical approach makes the play relevant in a powerful way, by challenging us to really think about the characters and themes and how they resonate in our own lives -- to walk out of the theatre someone different than we walked in.

This might all sound a little pretentious. In fact, it's totally the opposite. You don't have to have seen THE SEAGULL or even be familiar with Chekov to enjoy STUPID F**KING BIRD. You just have to be a person with wants and needs, a person who's ever felt judged, a person who's ever been thwarted. Who doesn't fit that description?

Portland Center Stage's production of STUPID F**KING BIRD is actually the Woolly Mammoth Theatre production (Woolly Mammoth being the theatre in Washington, D.C., where the play had its world premiere in 2013). And it's great.

We're lucky enough to get to see most members of the original cast. My favorites were Kimberly Gilbert, who stole every scene she was in as Mash (she gets the pleasure of saying Chekov's wonderfully dramatic line, "I'm in mourning for my life"), and Charles Leggett, who wasn't in the original cast, but who is excellent in this one as an aging doctor who would just like some human connection, or at least someone to listen.

Other major highlights: black light Chekov, the Chekovian party set change between Acts II and III, all the little homages to the original, and, most of all, the ending, which provides closure in a very different, but somehow just right, way. And did I mention there's music?

All in all, I loved the play. I think Chekov would have been quite pleased with it as well.

STUPID F**KING BIRD runs through March 27. Get your tickets at www.pcs.org.

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