The Birds (St Ann's Warehouse)
The Birds (St Ann's Warehouse)
Closed 2h 0m NYC: Brooklyn
72% 24 reviews
72%
(24 Ratings)
Positive
59%
Mixed
33%
Negative
8%
Members say
Confusing, Disappointing, Entertaining, Ambitious, Clever

About the Show

Following its world premiere at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus and in Athens, Greece, this vibrant restaging of Aristophanes’ ancient classic brings two Athenians to the country of the birds. 

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Critic Reviews (5)

The New York Times
May 6th, 2018

"The greatest thrills and chills here come from watching the ways in which the show’s avian population resembles people from news footage caught up in the frenzy of a populist movement...Two uninterrupted hours of such fare can eventually wear on the nerves...Nonetheless, 'The Birds' offers sights and sounds you won’t catch anywhere else in this city...The first, full-throated example of the birdsong...It isn’t pretty, exactly, but it’s harsh and hypnotic, primal and ethereal at the same time."
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New York Magazine / Vulture
May 7th, 2018

"Its audacious, celebratory silliness, its sheer irreverent vitality, actually feels more revolutionary, more slyly political and politically effective than 99 percent of the productions you’ve seen that have puffed up their chests and flailed their fists and hammered on seriously about Serious Things...The play is a festival; a heady, loopy, two-hour jamboree that’s kind of like a mental mosh pit...Have turned a nearly 2,500-year-old text into a jubilant full-throttle carnival of the senses."
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Theater Pizzazz
May 9th, 2018

“Nikos Karathanos’s wild revival of 'The Birds'...feels as fresh, as topical, and as timely as if it were written today...A phalanx of riotous, bare-breasted birds, costumed in colorful plumage...As Greek choruses go, you couldn’t find a more entertaining one...Karathanos’s stagecraft is a marvelous, creative synthesis of ancient and pop-culture. You sit in St. Ann’s auditorium, looking down at a spectacle whose primal, orgiastic energy transcends two millennia.”
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Exeunt Magazine
May 11th, 2018

“Infuses Aristophanes’ ancient texts with an energy that’s both present and timeless: in spite of the language barriers, the message is accessible...What’s disappointing was the ex-machina resolution...Nevertheless...a magnificent work of beauty...The cast’s evocative performances will resonate...An ambitious attack on the text...beautifully crafted piece of theatre...The importance of language becomes almost minimal as we absorb the story through its superb physical movements.”
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Village Voice
May 11th, 2018

"The adaptation has so defanged itself that it seems inert, despite two hours and ten minutes of constant choreography and insistent revelry...Lost in the relatively low gloom, it’s difficult to imagine this cloud-cuckoo-land is a paradise...Substituting movement and noise for argument and salience are certainly any theatermaker’s right, and many audience members seemed delighted to be invited to the party. But I kept peeping around for something to mean anything."
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