Birds of Paradise has music and book by David Evans and lyrics and book by Winnie Holzman (thirtysomething, My So-Called Life). You probably haven’t heard of it, never mind seen this show, for good reason: as backstage musicals go, it’s no 42nd Street. The behind-the-scenes bickering and ultimate conciliation of the Harbor Island Players just don’t have the stakes of the grown-up versions.
Here Reed is playing Lawrence Wood, a professional actor and former member of the troupe who is visiting to give them some advice. The stylized presentation of Stop the World suited Reed better, since here he comes across as stagy at the beginning. Everyone settles down by Act II, as Wood has agreed to direct — and drastically trim — a musical written by one of the company, Homer (Jeff Church).
The resulting show-within-a-show is a surreal adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, set during the last Ice Age. The high point of the whole enterprise is a song-and-dance number, “Penguins Must Sing,” choreographed by Julia Strong, and entertainingly delivered by Ben Rose, Rachel Ladd, and Patrick Greene. (The second funniest bit in the show involves a misunderstanding over whether the Birds of Paradise are feathered or floral.)
It’s way easier than a beach book. It’s read to you and even acted out.
Related:
New to DVD for the week of December 27, 2005, Bird brain, Ballet birds, More 
- New to DVD for the week of December 27, 2005
New DVD releases for the week of December 27, 2005
- Bird brain
The plays of Anton Chekhov don’t take well to dance.
- Ballet birds
It’s been a decade since Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake burst into the public consciousness, transforming the familiar image of the ballet swan, with her crown of feathers and undulating arms, into a feral, malevolent male bird surrounded by his fearsome flock.
- Breslin turns bard
Jimmy Breslin, Pulitzer-winning columnist and author, has turned playwright.
- Water music
Swan Lake is ballet’s ultimate act of yearning.
- Back story
The English choreographer Matthew Bourne isn’t the first to propose an Oedipal dimension for Swan Lake .
- Spring steps
Connor walked around the rehearsal, encouraging the dancers to “think of yourself as a hawk.”
- Measure for measure
“Great Ball at the Court of France,” which Ensemble Doulce Mémoire presented at the First Congregational Church in Cambridge last Friday, under the auspices of the Boston Early Music Festival, was a reminder that classical music used to be all about two popular forms, song and dance.
- Old meets new
At regional theaters around the country, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol , that cash cow successfully mated with a golden goose, might as well be called Déjà Vu .
- Review: In the Loop
Six years ago, Armando Iannucci's slick and merciless political satire might have drawn more blood, but even now it blows away the recent satiric competition with its sharp, sardonic screenplay and uncompromising cynicism.
- Water and air
Bred in the city that Peter the Great built on a marsh to be Russia’s window onto Europe, the Kirov Ballet is equal parts water, air, and Euclid.
- Less
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Theater
, Entertainment, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, More
, Entertainment, Nature and the Environment, Wildlife, Birds, Musicals, Winnie Holzman, Anthony Newley, Micah Tougas, Less
