Stupid Fu**ing Bird
Opening Night: March 15, 2016
Closing: May 8, 2016
Theater: The Pearl Theater
Conrad’s desperate love for Nina might just be the death of him—if his imperious mother and her latest fling don’t get there first. Aaron Posner’s award-winning, wry riff on “The Seagull” scoops up Chekhov’s tale of unrequited love, missed opportunities, and misplaced dreams and sets it down squarely in the bustle of 21st century life. But the more things change the more they really don’t—and the artist frustrated by the emptiness of modern art, the dissatisfied young woman yearning for freedom, and the has-beens and never-weres of a passing generation all still wonder: “What are we doing here?”
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March 28, 2016
The expletive smack in the middle of the title of Aaron Posner’s “sort of” adaptation of “The Seagull” is not there for decoration, or even provocation. It is wholly emblematic of Mr. Posner’s raw, theatrically audacious version of this Chekhov classic, which is being presented in New York in a viscerally well-acted production from the Pearl Theater Company. “Stupid _____ Bird,” like many adaptations of Chekhov, sets the play in the here and now, only more so. The drama follows the essential contours of the original, but Mr. Posner also crashes through the fourth wall at regular intervals and ultimately implies that the play that we are watching is not a fixed entity, but is being unleashed from the frantic mind of Constantin (Christopher Sears), or Con, as we are absorbing it. The play’s meta-theatrical elements — the exposed backstage sets (a first-rate design by Sandra Goldmark); the actors in the wings watching the action; the occasional acknowledgment that we are watching not life but an artificial imitation of it — are hardly original. But Mr. Posner integrates them with Chekhov’s drama in a way that makes us view the original with fresh, startled eyes.
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