Neal Weaver – Stage Raw
People are always doing things to Chekhov. At least since the 1950s, when Joshua Logan reset The Cherry Orchard to the post-Civil War American South in a short-lived adaptation called The Wisteria Trees, the Russian playwright has been adapted, spoofed, satirized, de-constructed, re-conceived, re-thought, re-written and plagiarized. Chekhov Derivatives and Recycling has become a growth industry. Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Birdis part of that movement, but it’s more interesting than most because, despite its departures from the original text, it remains, for most of its length, true in spirit to Chekhov. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
The third Chekhov takeoff this year in Los Angeles (could I have missed any?), after The Country House and Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike, Stupid F—ing Bird may be the most self-consciously post-modern of the trio, with its resolutely present-day argot, deliberate ironic posturing and winking asides to the audience. Read more…
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly
In Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull, about the theater and its ambiguous relationship to life, neurotic young playwright Konstantin Treplev speaks about the calcification of theater and of the necessity to create “new forms.” As Treplev ages, he evolves and devolves into a long-suffering, modestly successful author of quasi-inventive plays that might pretend to have new forms but actually don’t. Read more…
Now running through July 27.