Washington Post
- Recommended
"...All of this is more restless than new, yet director Howard Shalwitz's shrewdly governed, zestfully acted show keeps bursting with both heat and light. Posner roughly keeps to Chekhov's plot and faithfully sticks to "The Seagull's" themes as an anguished young man named Treplev - here renamed Con - puts on a radical but poetically dense new show in front of his spotlight-hogging mother, an established stage star."
DC Theater Arts
- Highly Recommended
"...Life is what you make of it; happy or miserable, good or bad, it doesn't matter because life just goes on and on and on. Human beings are flawed. They have needs.They want more. It's true of all of us as we blunder along down the road of life, ever searching for the ultimate answer to the great question: Why? And we may never find it, but it's that question that we often find propelling us forward through our daily grind, and such a question finds a poignant exploration in the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's world premier of Aaron Posner's Stupid Fucking Bird."
DCist
- Recommended
"...While Posner's final product may not be a new form altogether, it is certainly a refreshing splash of cool water on dry, well-trod terrain. Put it this way: As fine as the 2008 Royal Court Theatre's mounting of Seagull was on Broadway, with Peter Sarsgaard and Kristin Scott Thomas in the lead roles, that was positively mopey in comparison to this."
Washington City Paper
- Recommended
"...In his more familiar identity as a director, Posner is the most reliable theatermaker in town. He's less well-known as a playwright, but Stupid Fucking Bird might flip that ratio. In its fidelity and its fearlessness, it recalls Gnit, Will Eno's flippant update of Peer Gynt, which debuted at the Humana Festival of New America Plays this spring (and also, coincidentally, starred Eastwood-Norris). They're both clear-eyed reconsiderations of towering 19th century works that glower down through the decades predigested-too irreproachable, we thought, to inspire any memorable acts of vandalism."
The Georgetowner
- Recommended
"...The Woolly crowd—and director Howard Shalwitz—thrive in this sort of thing. It’s like their very own private theatrical swimming pool and sauna. You can’t get hurt when you have the likes of Gilbert—who always manages to wring her own sort of poetry out of a matter-of-fact delivery that is secretly and deeply weird. Consider Masha, Cody Mitchell, who makes self-satisfaction seem warmly attractive as Doyle, the always savy Kate Eastwood-Norris as Emma, the diva mother/actress, Katie DeBuys, who adds an extra-step depth to Nina, and Darius Pierce (as Dev who married Mash, who loves Com) and Rick Foucheux as the wondering Sorn. If you get irritated with Brad Koed as Con, it’s because the part is written that way. Con is the wounded art revolutionary as whiner, both in the romantic and artistic sense."
MD Theatre Guide
- Highly Recommended
"...Because the Woolly Mammoth had the luxury to workshop several variations on the play over a long period of time, there is some snap timing and crackling asides in the ensemble work. It's such a pleasure to watch each of the actors at work in their small gestures or eye rolls, shrugs and swoons, even when they have no lines. Their individual responses to the "performance piece" are priceless."
DCTheatreScene
- Highly Recommended
Stupid Fucking Bird won’t change the history of theater – it’s too honest to do that – but in scope of ambition, wit, insight, power of observation, beauty of language and quality of execution, is as good as anything you’ve seen in Washington this season
