Some call it a chamber opera. Others insist it’s simply musical theater—even a glorified carny show. Birds in the Moon incorporates all of those elements in a dazzling, far-out production which was just seen in L.A. As conceived by Mark Grey, who wrote the libretto and score, the show marked Broad Stages’ return to live theater after 18 months of Covid isolation. Performed on a container stage in a Santa Monica parking lot, Birds in the Moon is a mobile show conceived for two performers, a string quartet, electronic music, and a video operator. Think “La Strada” with 21st-century touches.
Austin Spangler plays a raffish ringmaster, Maria Elena Altay a singing bird. The two connect and take part in a battle of wits and needs, with the ringmaster trying to keep her prisoner in order to learn how to fly from her. She, of course, wants to break free and become a bird again, live “in a place with no borders.”
What further complicates their bizarre relationship are the flashes of love they feel for each other, the intricacies of the master-slave relationship. All this unfolds on a double-deck stage in La Luna, a carnival-like arena dominated by a full moon.
The moon is a key symbol, if only because Birds in the Moon was inspired by the writings of Charles Morton, a 17th-century alchemist who came up with the notion that birds migrate to the moon, where they spend their last days, sending their offspring back to earth before death takes them.
Lest that sound too ridiculous for words, remember what’s been going on at our borders, with poor, desperate parents handing over their young children to the authorities in the hope that this will somehow lead to a better life for them.
Spangler doesn’t sing, but he commands the stage nonetheless with his powerful speaking voice and dominating physical presence. Altay in her bird costume (brilliant design by Christine Crook) thrills in song and has magical qualities as an actress.
Grey’s score is equally vibrant, with its musical passages divided between live and electronic, with surprises at every turn, as befits a man who entered the music scene as a sound engineer and whose last work was an original take on “Frankenstein.”
