Photo by Evan Hanover
Relationships between adult children and their parents are often fraught: no matter how much love they share, how much they enjoy each other’s company, there is often a little niggling thought in the back of their minds: the child desiring approval but aware of the parent’s flaws, the parent stuck seeing the child as, well, a child, and insistent that they know best. In Anna Ouyang Moench’s beautiful and masterful Birds of North America, now receiving an encore run at A Red Orchid Theatre, this sweet, sad dynamic plays out over the years of a relationship apparently glued together by a fondness for birding.
John Judd and Cassidy Slaughter Mason reprise their roles from the earlier run, with Kirsten Fitzgerald returning to direct, along with a sumptuous sound design by Ethan Korvne, equally outstanding lighting by Seojung Jang, and a set by Morgan Laszlo that is one of the best I’ve seen in any small theatre. All of them place us squarely into several different autumns in a small, wooded suburban Baltimore back yard, replete with birds and fallen colorful leaves, where John and his daughter Caitlyn enjoy their hobby together throughout the play.
A decade of in-play time takes place in about eighty minutes, during which we witness the relationship between father and daughter as their individual lives twist and turn. The love they share is clear despite the crusty, set-in-his-ways nature of John’s attitude and the fact that he (a truly progressive, climate-conscious man) finds Caitlyn’s choice of men as wanting as her job at a conservative blog is horrifying. She protests that she is not political at all and it is just a job, but all he can see is a betrayal of the ideals he has inculcated in her.
Moench’s dialogue is lovely as it realistically and uncompromisingly portrays the many missed connections between the two, and both Judd and Slaughter-Mason fully embody their roles. In fact, they are both so perfect here that I can’t even imagine anyone else playing these parts. Judd does not try to soften John’s sometimes harsh demeanor, but at all times he manages to show us the man’s heart. It doesn’t take Slaughter-Mason very long at all to let us know, from subtle looks and movements, that her own affinity for birding is more about pleasing her father than it is about her own love of the activity. She does enjoy seeing the birds, especially when she finds them herself, even when they are merely the “LBJs” (little brown jobs…or sparrows) that John scoffs at. At one point, she comes across his fallen record book and looks through it, stunned to see how much detail her father puts into his sightings which, for her, are just about being together with him.
Re-reading that paragraph, I realize that it could sound maudlin. I must assure you, though, that there is absolutely nothing maudlin about this play, whose title sounds more like an ornithology reference book than the quiet, lovely, haunting story it is. Sometimes we can define our lives in quiet moments, and Fitzgerald and her veteran performers, in the tiny space of A Red Orchid Theatre, immerse us in them. This is a beautiful play filled with honest human emotions. It will stay with me for a long time.
Birds of North America is now playing at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells St, Chicago, until October 4, 2026. Performance times vary; check the website. Find more information about current plays on our Current Shows page and at theatreinchicago.com.