Underbellies are seldom pleasant places. You see disturbing things there. Things that may even make you angry. Things like you’ll see and hear at Steep Theater’s take no prisoners production of Birdland; a splendid riff on a Patti Smith poem of the same name about the dark side of fame.
Because Birdland so ruthlessly rips the cover from our fantasies of what it’s like to live in the spotlight, Steep’s revealing epic running ending June 15th will make you question dreams of fame and glory.
Opening with tight precision and a loud action movie bang, we’re immediately transported to a luxury suite in a magnificent Moscow hotel. It’s only the dialog that lets us know where we are; bolstered by the sumptuous and chicly masculine leather jackets Paul (Joel Reitsma) and Johnny (Dushane Casteallo) are wearing. These are clothes that reek of elite privilege as well as style.
They’ve just finished a concert before 75,000 people and Paul wants a peach. That peach sets the tone for the whole play because it carries its weight in caveats. It must be perfectly ripe and have an ideal texture. It must be exquisitely sweet, but not too. And it must be sourced locally. Paul is a man of high demands. And, as we’re soon to learn, with a tongue that enjoys drawing blood.
A couple of pop stars who started performing to get girls to smile at them now fill stadiums and constantly have phones pointing at them. Theirs is an alternate reality where fame has warped behavior.
The dynamics of the way people relate to one another make up the meat and muscle of Birdland. Once your ego over powers your integrity and dismantle all of your filters simply because you’ve attained a fantasy existence, what are you?
Taking its time to systematically dissect the pathology of megalomania, we see the full breath of its impact on the perpetrator and the victims. It’s of little consequence that the pop stars are British and not American. The nature of the beast doesn’t change because of geography or an accent.
Building a smashing career has to be a thrilling journey. Simon Stephens made sure his play is just as electrifying and, more importantly, memorable. Like brightly colored Lego pieces that fit together to make an incredible mosaic, the actors in this story about the emptiness on the unseen side fame bring a captivating realism to their performances.
As the perpetually wired lead, Reitsma is on stage and “on” for the entire two hours of the performance. Feigning charm in order to later rise like a cobra and strike a withering blow to the unsuspecting, he racks his attacks up like trophies he’s due because he’s him; an adored star.
Casteallo’s Johnny is the cool one. Laid back and tolerant only to a point. It’s when Paul’s viciousness reaches Trumpian proportions does he use the reins. But these are always only temporary reprieves from Paul’s endless assaults on anyone who is not him.
When he tells Louis (Jim Poole), a fawning fan, that he’ll get him a room in his 5-star hotel if Louis will sing for him, Louis complies with all the sweetness of the truly innocent. Despite the endearing effort, Paul proceeds to ridicule the mini performance with cold mocking distain. It’s no wonder Paul mused early on in the story that he thought he might be cancer.
Poole, like most of the eight-member cast played an array of roles. He also portrayed Paul’s father, an everyday Joe in awe of his successful son. The effectiveness of Poole’s versatility was typical of everyone in the cast. When Casteallo morphed into a hip journalist interviewing the now recalcitrant idol or when Alia Peck and Cindy Marker become scathingly cocky detectives closing in on a fatal misstep, you see what can happen when skillful acting is seared to great writing. That combination, for the audience, is exhilarating.
In real life, it would be foolhardy to assume some kind of divine justice would be meted out to balance the evil in someone like Paul. In Blackbird, it falls likes bricks from the unsympathetic lips of his lawyer, David (Peter Moore). The final scene unveiling how fame can be an illusion arrives after another crippling realization paralyzes Paul with fear and the cloak of invincibility drops to the ground.
