Two worlds converge to dark uncertainty. These linked plays are completely different in style but taken together, they resonate and provide tremendous opportunity for gifted actors.
Matt Hartley wrote The Bee with a satirical pen as broad as a paintbrush. High school sweetie Chloé (Tayler Gill, left, below) is devastated when her older brother Luke dies in a traffic accident. His dramatic end provides a point of excitement and assembly for the rest of his high school class, particularly for bubble headed Hannah (Melissa Recalde, right).
Candlelight vigils, a dedicated website, Hannah's efforts to scoop some of that admiration and kumbaya feeling for herself . . . the focus is not on the dead boy but on his acquaintances' exploitation of his death. Melissa Recalde plays her breathy self-dramatizing character to the outer edges of parody, a director's decision that strengthens our sympathy for the relatively contained and nondescript Chloé.This being the 21st century, Chloé takes refuge on the Internet, initially at the memorial website for Luke. Unable to talk to family or friends face-to-face, she opens up in on-line chat to someone named "Jacob" (Chase Wooldridge).
We hear only Chloé's side of the dialogue. Wooldridge hovers spook-like, unseen, next to her on stage as, gradually, she imagines an escape from her troubles. She beams as she puts together a suicide package and prepares to meet Jacob in a hidden grotto in the woods.
Lights out. Chloé's world is extinguished, both literally and symbolically.
Chase Wooldridge immediately opens The Bird by Al Smith, an almost-solo tour de force. The silent "Jacob" reveals himself in a driving Russian-accented monologue to be Jakob Mamontov, a man in his late teens or early twenties. Wooldridge paces with the energy of a caged animal, addressing a figure huddled under a blanket, remembering and recounting his life, driven by stresses that we do not initially understand. He gathers fury gradually and inexorably as he reveals himself and his past. Wooldridge's intensity, modulation and control of this evolution are gripping.
Isolated in an attic as an infant, wrapped with his Russian mother in a hot, lonely embrace over the years, Jacob is completely asocial and untutored. She reluctantly allows him to attend school, dressing him in girl's clothing. Jacob the feral child can't speak English. The other children, in their own social bubbles, ignore him. A teacher's distracted explanation and illustration of geometry strikes Jacob like a thunderbolt. Indifferent and without surprise, the teacher sets him straight, provides him with appropriate clothing and the opportunity to learn.Growing awareness poisons Jakob. He gradually understands the source of his mother's paranoias, the extent of her sacrifices for him, and the brutality she endures from clients -- hurried, anonymous, and uncaring men who thrust themselves upon her. Melissa Recalde as Jakob's mother Eva Mamontov is a bewildered martyr, mostly silent, except for the sharp moan of pain that escapes her as visitors take their pleasure.
Trying to save Eva, Jacob blackmails a transport official into giving him a job as a cleaner. Meagre wages are not enough to break their slavery. Eva falls ill. Late at night at the traffic authority Jacob begins to meddle with the computers, as revenge for the indifference surrounding them. He finds the high school's website in memory of Luke, contacts and courts the unseen Chloé and eventually, desperate, comes to ask Eva what to do. His world is collapsing.The glossy program for these pieces includes an interview with playwright Al Smith and background about the stir they caused at the 2008 Edinburgh festival. Smith and Hartley were motivated to undertake the joint project in part by a rash of suicides by young persons in a small county in Wales, a total of 24 deaths in 2007 and 2008 that appear to have been related to social networking sites.
The tacit thesis is that the anonymity of cyber-contact intensifies the anomie of the individual. A well-off schoolgirl is ready to rid herself of the world and an intelligent, emotionally deprived man-child is drawn to feed on her emotions. Horrific things have happened to each of them, and the playwrights leave us only to imagine the outcome of their eventual meeting in the grotto.
The twin plots replicate the nightmares of any parents. The irony is that Chloé's parents are so fixated on a dead son that they fail to read the intentions of the daughter who remains, while Eva, with nothing, has sacrificed everything for her son.
The decor is stark -- piles of large cardboard boxes represent the cave in The Bee and the claustrophobic attic in The Bird. The company plays these pieces essentially on a bare stage, and they're all the more powerful for that.
Joey Seiler's review of The Bird and The Bee for the Statesman's Austin360 arts blog, January 26
Emily Macrander's review in the Daily Texan, with comments from director Kelli Bland, January 27
Ryan E. Johnson's review on Austin.com, January 30
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