Kristine Nielsen (seated center) as materfamilias Elinore in Julia Izumi’s Regretfully, So the Birds Are, surrounded by Sky Smith (seated left) as Neel, Sasha Diamond (seated right) as Illy, and Shannon Tyo (standing center) as Mora.
As the loopy title suggests, Regretfully, So the Birds Are is theater of the absurd. Julia Izumi’s play concerns three New Jersey siblings adopted from Southeast Asia by a Caucasian couple (Gibson Frazier and the incomparable Kristine Nielsen) who’ve refused to tell the children where they were born. The parents’ rationale is that, if their adoptive offspring don’t know where they come from, they’ll feel their “origins are the Whistler family” rather than separate, far-off countries.
Mora (Shannon Tyo, right) seeks love and understanding from her opioid-addled mother, Elinor (Nielsen), who’s in jail for murdering Mora’s father by setting fire to the family home.
Izumi calls her play a “farcical tragedy,” but it doesn’t feel tragic, even late in the proceedings when one of the characters meets a bad end and others receive a spate of dire messages. On the contrary, Regretfully is roaringly funny throughout. Whatever Izumi may have had in mind as she wrote this play, the production now on view, directed at breakneck speed by Jenny Koons, comes off as a Millennial reimagining of the beloved 1936 comedy You Can’t Take It with You.
Nine years ago, in a Broadway revival of You Can’t Take It with You, Nielsen scored success as Penny Sycamore, the accidental dramatist who started writing because a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to her door. Kaufman and Hart’s 1936 comedy and Izumi’s newly-minted script are both about a family of zanies whose default mode is overdrive. In Regretfully, Nielsen again plays a kooky mother of adult children trying to find herself, this time with opioids and murder.
“What distinguishes Izumi’s writing is the casual yet efficient way darkness and pain permeate the characters’ hijinks and amusing dialogue. ”
Though Regretfully is a modest-sized play (90 minutes, no intermission), its plot is copious enough for a trilogy. The adoptees—Illy (Sasha Diamond), age 25; Neel (Sky Smith), 28; and Mora (Shannon Tyo), who’s turning 30—have always been a close-knit trio, but that’s changing. Illy, a viola virtuoso, has a résumé replete with scholarships and prizes. Neel, vague and wacky, has realized at a late date that he’s tone-deaf and unlikely to achieve his musical aspirations. After years of professional and romantic disappointments, Mora calls herself the “disaster older sister.”
While navigating the predictable shoals of early adulthood, the three are also facing unusual challenges on the home front. Their mother has recently been arraigned for arson and murder after setting the homeplace afire in a successful attempt to kill her husband. The father’s ghost now inhabits a snowman in the backyard, obsessively comparing his career to that of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.
Sasha Diamond as Illy (right) with Sky Smith as her brother/fiancé Neel in Regretfully, So the Birds Are, which playwright Izumi calls a “farcical tragedy” but which plays as fast-paced, absurdist comedy. Photographs by Chelcie Parry.
Izumi’s plot features family intrigue (the children recently learned that their father, who taught Asian history, hit on his Asian students); incest (Illy and Neel have become lovers—as Illy says, “It’s easy dating someone who already knows your shit and is cool with your shit because it’s very similar and sometimes identical to his shit“); plus anger, hurt, and alienation (Mora, who long defined herself as one of the inseparable Whistler kids, feels her siblings’ romantic love has exiled her from an enchanted circle). Then there are the birds—beautifully crafted puppets, some a little creepy, operated by cast members. These avian intruders converge on the Whistlers’ house to protest the “human-to-sky migration,” a socio-political movement to which Illy belongs and which the birds decry (“Cheep, cheep, cheep”) as an assault on their habitat. Finally, there’s tragedy: Mora, on a wild-goose chase “to find herself,” impetuously gets involved in political shenanigans in Cambodia, a clueless decision that leads to her undoing.
Izumi’s play isn’t much more absurd than Kaufman and Hart’s. What distinguishes her writing is the casual yet efficient way darkness and pain permeate the characters’ hijinks and amusing dialogue. The dark stuff (unknown in the sunny precincts of You Can’t Take It with You) becomes more prominent as Regretfully rolls along; yet, amazingly, Izumi presents it with a light, measured touch, never overwhelming the comedy. The beguiling cast of six ensures that, even when characters slide into the slough of despond, the audience isn’t dragged in after them.
Mora (Tyo), seeking her biological family in Southeast Asia, encounters the enigmatic Srey (Pearl Sun, left), who claims to have crucial information for that search.
Kaufman and Hart made laughter a source of hope to audiences of the Great Depression. Izumi’s writing, by contrast, is informed by horrors that have impeded and influenced Millennials to an extent unknown to other generations: terrorism, severe political division, perpetual war, digital mayhem, mass slayings with military-grade weapons, galloping climate change, quickly evolving infectious agents. Regretfully doesn’t hold out hope that things are going to get better but implies that life in the post-2000 world, absurd as it may be, is survivable and potentially very funny.
The Playwrights Horizons (PH) / WP Theater co-production of Regretfully, So the Birds Are runs at PH’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 42nd St.) through April 30. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit phnyc.org.
Playwright: Julia Izumi
Direction: Jenny Koons
Sets: You-Shin Chen
Costumes: Alicia J. Austin
Lighting: Stacey Derosier
Sound: Megumi Katayama
