The actors, puppeteers, designers, director and even the producers have given this beautiful play incredible support. The language energizes fearless clown-inspired performances, complete with haunting lullabyes, cowgirl ballads, and marching songs. The look and feel of the two worlds of the play resonate on a level beyond logic and emotion. On the blasted "Lop Side", a war-torn wasteland, an endless dirt floor is punctuated by a lone scorched tree and a blackened dresser, something so domestic and incongruous that immediately you intuit the discomfort and danger of the place. A fierce, malevolent wind periodically blows projected items across the stage. On the Bright Side, the tree house in which the main characters live is comprised of a gorgeous patchwork of found wooden objects that deserves an hour of inspection just to see how many pieces it's made of and where the pieces came from. It is airy and full of comforting things you might see in your own kitchen.
The play is a challenging one in the sense that it demands a lot of the audience. Birds fly out of a character's mouth, an army of ants invade, the wind blows furniture around--this is not a living-room play by any means. It is the story of two people and how they grow together and apart, and how the world changes us. If you like essential human truths like I do, there are plenty of lines that will follow you home that articulate those feelings you've always had but never new what they were. To me, going to the theater and seeing lives played out onstage is one of the most precious outlets we have for self-relection as a people, and Bird House delivers big-time.
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