Tongue Of A Bird

Play (1997)
by Ellen McLaughlin

With Olivia D’Ambrosio (Evie), Claudia Q. Nolan (Charlotte), Elizabeth Anne Rimar (Maxine), Ilyse Robbins (Dessa), Bobbie Steinbach (Zofia)

A child has been lost in the Adirondacks and her mother, Dessa (Ilyse Robbins), beside herself, hires Maxine (Elizabeth Anne Rimar) to go in search of any evidence. Along the way, Maxine encounters her own grandmother, Zofia (Bobbie Steinbach), and reflects, through vivid memories, on her relationship with her own mother, Evie (Olivia D’Ambrosio).

Right off the bat, I should say that this is a beautifully acted and directed piece of work. Each of the women who participate in this all-woman outing does an excellent job.

Elizabeth Rimar as Maxine, the protagonist pilot, is strong, evocative, clear, and carries, as best she can, the considerable metaphoric weight of this play.

Bobbie Steinbach (Zofia), her grandmother, is just great in a role beautifully suited to her. Her Eastern European accent is superb. And her way of mixing apparent heartlessness and gruffness with a covert tenderness is quite something.

Ilyse Robbins (Dessa), the mother of the missing child, is superbly expressive and gives a vivid rendition of that horrific condition. She gives enormous articulation to each phrase and gesture, enabling the character’s desperation and yearning to come through passionately and clearly.

Olivia D’Ambrosio (Evie), as Maxine’s mother, is taut, strong, vivid. She combines extremely well the fragile fusion of memory that is just beyond reach but durable in hope, and does it with spark, determination, a bit of toughness, and just the right hint of longing regret.

Claudia Q. Nolan (Charlotte), as the girl, projects with amazing clarity, carrying through beautifully well, especially for one of her seeming tender years.

Clearly the direction of this production by Emily Ranii is top notch to have drawn out these results.

That being said, I would say that the writing of the play felt a bit heavy-handed at times. There is something so seemingly intentionally metaphoric about it, so laden in the speeches and declarations by each of the characters, that it gets a bit wearing. There is almost nothing indirect or suggestive about it since it says so much so constantly. There is something curious about this idea of having an airplane search in the Adirondacks signify something about the search for missing mothers and daughters, but the import of that is so heavily overpacked that there is no interpretive room for the audience to move.

I once heard a lecture by the playwright Tom Stoppard in which he offered, ironically but vividly, the hope that (to paraphrase) “Waiting for Godot is really mostly a play about two bums…” I had that feeling here – that I wanted the play to strip away some of its many seeming layers of intended signification and show itself a bit more transparently.

Remarkably, despite what feels like an overwrought play, the production itself is extremely good. I found myself captivated and enthralled by the actors and consequently felt only mild continuing irritation at the sometimes overbearing writing.

– BADMan