"The Power of Birds"
last night!

     There’s an interesting author’s note in the program for Robin Rice Lichtig’s The Power of Birds now at the Milagro Theater, and explains much about her fascinating and somewhat mysterious play. It’s an essay on bird migration; specifically, whether the migration is voluntary,  crucial to the species survival or involuntary. In the play Loretta, abandoned by her bird-obsessed husband Phillip, believes her move from Bath, Maine to the college town of Williamstown, Massachusetts is crucial to her and her family’s survival. Her twelve year old son Charlie is willing to go along, but her twelve year old daughter Zoe and her ex-mother-in-law Lily are not. But Zoe is too young and Lily too old and arthritic to fend for themselves, and so away they all go.

     Things don’t improve once the family’s in Williamstown. Half crazy with longing for her father and incipient adolescence, and convinced that her sports and achievement obsessed mother favors her computer nerd twin, Zoe thinks up a wild and improbable scheme to get Phillip back. Lily, a former hippie, is both laid back and disturbingly candid -- at least to Loretta -- about her life. She too longs for a missing man, but it’s her dead husband and not her son. Indeed, she blames Phillip for her husband’s death; had he not been trying to commune with some bird he would have gotten them to the hospital faster after her husband was bitten by a raccoon. Loretta is too harried to even notice her daughter’s violent unhappiness and only Charlie seems okay.  What ultimately happens to their family is startling, a little bit magical, hopefully healing.

     The Power of Birds proves again that some of the best acting in New York is being done in little venues around the city. Emma Galvin is explosive as Zoe. She makes you feel the full force of her grief and anger; you both empathize with her and want to smack her for being a brat. Margot Avery is a warmhearted Lily, not quite bitter about her son, still vitally in love with her husband. Annie McGovern’s Loretta is also moving as the mother who doesn’t quite know what to do with her life except keep moving/migrating, and Noah Galvin is wonderful as Charlie, who loves the women in his life in his own twelve year old boy’s way. And Jay Potter’s turn as the pixilated, irresponsible Phillip, who exists at the margins of his family, shouldn’t be overlooked. 

     Elizabeth Bunnell is an able director, making use of the space at the CSV Education and CUltural Center and bringing out the best in her actors. This theater, built as it is in an old church, seems darker and murkier than usual, but lighting designer Joshua Scherr uses this to his advantage, giving the space an appropriate sort of dreaminess. To augment this, set designer Tijana Bjelajac hangs twiggy bird cages everywhere. Costume designer Brooke Cohen and sound designer John D. Ivy add to the late 00’s ambiance.

     The Power of Birds is presented by 3Graces Theater Co. and will be at the Milagro Theater, 107 Suffolk Street, till March 13.


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