Imagine trying to explain the plot of the Lord Of The Rings to someone using only the names of characters. You may get as far as ‘Frodo has a ring that was stolen by Bilbo from Golem…’ before their eyes start to glaze over with confusion. The Gypsybird Speaks is that conversation stretched out for an hour and forty-five minutes. In short, the entire play is completely incomprehensible.
The plot, the dialogue, the characters - everything is tainted by the audience having absolutely no idea what was going on. I spent the whole production perplexed by a character whose name alternates between “Annie” and “Cathy” for no apparent reason. The Gypsybird Speaks seems to revel in the confusion it creates, as if the playwright penned it with the sole intention of making it as unfathomable as possible. The dialogue in particular is an enigma of riddles, repeated lines and intellectual one-upmanship that is almost impossible to keep up with. When done well nonsense verse can be an intriguing medium, the work of Lewis Carroll being the obvious example, but this production had none of the charm of Wonderland nor the plucky heroine to guide us through the muddle. The Gypsybird Speaks abandons its audience from the word go and resolutely ignores them until the very end.
It’s a shame because the Max Bell Theatre Company had obviously tried hard with the production. There’s some nice work with puppets and a strong closing scene where giant wings emerge from the back of a character to reveal the Gypsybird of the title. The cast handle such dire material as best they can and should be applauded for not tripping up over the deliberately tongue-tying dialogue. Yet they are not miracle workers and their characters remain strangers to an audience given no incentive to care about them. I kept expecting it to get better, for there to be some big reveal or explanation, but it never came. I spent the final half hour wishing the Gypsybird would just hurry up and spit it out already so we could all go home. There’s no fun to be had sitting in the dark feeling lost.
