Aaron Posner’s Stupid F–ing Bird is described by its American author as “sort of adapted from The Seagull.” I’d say it was sort of very closely adapted. This kind of thing can easily be irritating, but Stupid F–ing Bird gives self-consciousness a good name. Daniel Maslany plays Conrad. Posner’s dialogue swings and so does his story-telling, even if the story is mostly somebody else’s, and the actors feast on both. Posner’s play is less an adaptation of Chekhov than a parallel text, “parallel lines who meet” as Stephen Sondheim wrote in Company, geometrically impossible but theatrically illuminating, in both directions.

Source: National Post March 07, 2017 19:52 UTC