If there is a reason why the play by Jiehae Park “The Aves” is presented with a lower title, it is probably not because all the birds of the world are contained in its classification of two words. “The Aves”, which now receives its world premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, is a discreet experience to think about life, death, youth, age, love, loss and, yes, birds. Pigeons and doves, above all.
The short piece in one act (it’s only 80 minutes) is a minor work on major themes, an unusual piece of lyrical science fiction that does not look like most of the things we see in a theater. On the one hand, the intimate stadium of the thrust of the Peet theater by Berkeley Rep was transformed by the creator of Set Marsha Ginsberg into a quiet pond covered with bisses by a wooden walkway. There is a marble bench, where most of the action of the room occurs, and the magnificent lighting design of Masha Tsimring, as well as elements like rain, snow, mist and fog, offer a feeling of time.
The room begins simply, with an older couple (Bill Buell and Mia Katigbak) having the kind of school conversation that people have after 50 years of marriage – a affection and an embarrassment with equal parts. There is something that boils under the surface, however, and what is a slightly interesting conversation on the weather and birds in “The Twilight Zone” by “Black Mirror” but with less horror and a more poetic dialogue.
The playwright park and the director Knud Adams invite us in this meditative park, where green water in the pond whips sometimes and is sometimes immobile. It is a place where people have important conversations and where the mysteries seem to become something enormous, but really they are only climbing on a human scale with choices, regrets, faults and futility.
To say more about how Buell and Katigbak share the scene with Laakan Mchardy and Daniel Croix would disclose too much on the sweet way to take place, then swing this way and that, with deliciously strange surprises during the way. If you have already wondered how children and pigeons could react to death in a very special episode of “Severance” in a zen garden floating in a non -specific space, it could be the room for you.
Knud’s management of the actors must allow a space of mystery and tension among the relatable and recognizable people to exist alongside humor, despair and quite palpable sadness. It is a bit like a battle of High Art (the obtuse drama) and low art (sitcom), self -awareness of people by people who only live their lives.
The magnificent setting helps to contain all this, but it is the excellent actors who keep it really anchored and poignant. The star is Katigbak, who fully embodies the extent of the ambition of the play by playing two very different women at the opposite stages of their lives who share a unique and almost unfathomable bond. Her key scene forces us to understand who she was and who she is, how she is the same and how she is different, and Katigbak’s ability to do so with clarity, heat and humor is extremely satisfactory.
For a small play, “The Aves” makes a big request to its audience to accept caricatured alongside the philosophical in a theatrical cerebral way, with a relational drama and the inevitable trauma to age, which gives a very real weight. All this does not flow, and a game has the impression of needing more weight both in terms of narrative clarity and emotional weight.
But for most of its short term, “The Aves” is an incredibly designed and unique theatrical experience that attracts – and reward – attention. There are many currents flowing under its waters in a gently moving.
Chad Jones has written on the Bay Area Theater since 1992; Theatherdogs.net
‘Aves’
World Premiere by Jiehae Park, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theater
Through: June 8
Or: Peet’s Theater, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Operating time: 80 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $ 25 – $ 134 (subject to change); 510-647-2949; www.berkeleyrep.org
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