Sweetpea @ Second Thought Theatre
—Martha Heimberg
After a breakup, two lonely people decide to move back in together and spend lots of time in her tidy, compact apartment, striving to be totally honest with each other. He’s hoping the new pet bird he got will get along with her pet bird, who already lives there. They have separate little cages. (The birds, that is.) Any guesses about the odds of success?
Second Thought Theatre closes their 2021 season with the world premiere production of Janielle Kastner’s Sweetpea, a play about second chances for humans and birds, heroically directed by Carson McCain in one hour and 45 minutes of constant coming and going through three doors and two bird cages, all on a smart-looking, efficient set designed by Amelia Bransky in the comfortably raked, two-sided black box theater.
The play follows the now-familiar arc of a comic beginning that turns serious halfway through, as characters confront increasing obstacles. It gets harder to laugh off those old yukky habits, and everyone gets strung out as feathers and coloring books fly.
Two actors play four parts. Tatiana Gantt is She, the tense, fast-chatty and yoga-stretching female who owns both the place and Sweetpea, her pet bird and alter ego, who nests happily in a yellow cage by a window. Thomas Magee is He, the affable and willing ex who begs to move back in because he misses curtains and other amenities She has to offer. Magee is also Rosebud/Buddy, his new pet bird and alter ego, who (after a jokey bit of gender confusion and naming of body parts) turns out to be a male of the species.
Second chance always means you failed once, right? So. When He walks in the door She plops him on the sofa and lays out the rules. Total honesty about feelings, including any anger he’s held onto because she hooked up with another guy back then. Role playing to get to deeper understanding of feelings. Charts. Lists. Gonna make it work. He complies. What’s a guy to do?
Much of the play is given over to She’s role-playing therapy, here a kind of cross between psychoanalysis and acting improvisation. The two pretend they’re strangers in a bar, or grade school buddies. Or he’s a predator posing as an interested renter. Some of this is telling, some is less. You Show Me Yours is funny and sweet, as they try to put male and female orgasms into words. The fun of the play is when the couple either rushes offstage to the bedroom in sexual urgency, or storms out the door in a fury because role-playing hit a bad button. (Kudos to intimacy coordinator Danielle Georgiou.)
The mood shifts with Aaron Johansen’s sensitive lighting design, and the birds come alive, in the persons of their owners, and whistle and chat or tweet, in Claire Caron’s subtle sound design. Here both actors fly, figuratively. Gantt’s supple face moves from fretting to tranquility. Her arms close softly and winglike across her body. Her voice slows and deepens slightly. Sweetpea lives and flutters. Just don’t go rattling her cage and changing the view.
Magee’s Buddy bird, suddenly rising from invisibility in his little green cage on the floor, has most of the play’s sharp lines about cage-free living – and takes us on a soaring, invigorating hunt for prey! His body loosens from the hangdog posture of a weary man and he stands taller, shoulders back, and looks high up into the lights. He whistles a favorite song he learned when he lived with just his owner, and before his sudden introduction to Sweetpea, who has a problem with sudden.
The play moves convincingly from the human to the avian point of view, thanks to the close ensemble work and the especially charming rapport of the actors in bird mode. Are our pets ourselves? Or do they have a life of their own when we’re not around? Can one bird (or human?) live in a cage with another? Sweetpea goes a little long on couples quarrelling, but the bird watching is fine.
Costume designer Gelacio Eric Gibson’s yoga clothes and chic midriff-baring tops with silky jackets and pants make me want to get fit.
Sweetpea runs through Dec. 11, secondthoughttheatre.com
