Todd Bauer’s “The Bird Feeder Doesn’t Know” provides yet another entry in the burgeoning field of plays about grown children confronting the frailties — physical and emotional — of their aging parents. Though it has its formulaic moments, Jonathan Wilson’s staging for Raven Theatre also contains several scenes that should hit home for anyone in the position of trying to take care of the people who used to take care of them — sometimes to a fault. It’s often funny, but there is a foundation of sadness that leaves a wistful aftertaste.
The situation in Bauer’s story is complicated by the fact that Everett (Joshua J. Volkers), the only child of Korean war vet Herman (Chuck Spencer) and former Army nurse Ingrid (Sheila Landahl), has cerebral palsy. This hasn’t kept him from moving two hours away and pursuing a day job as a graphic designer and a sideline as a painter, neither of which are career choices his parents can understand. They veer between stubborn insistence on their independence and guilt-mongering about what he owes them. Assisted living is out of the question — Ingrid makes it clear she’s only leaving “in a body bag.”
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At first glance, Ingrid and Herman seem like cartoons of Fox News America, with their love of guns and their distrust of minorities. But Bauer manages to dig beneath that surface to show the fear of change guiding their lives. Landahl’s rigid Ingrid, who hints at a horrific childhood, refers to their home as “a bunker,” and she cares for it with a vengeance. (A scene where she tackles housework armed with a tool belt laden with every imaginable cleaning product got big — and knowing — laughs at the show I attended.)
And unlike other plays I’ve seen recently, where the financial burdens of caring for the elderly and infirm were never really discussed, it’s clear that Ingrid and Herman have real reasons to toss nickels around like manhole covers — his pension, like that of many elderly people, has been cut in half due to corporate shenanigans not of his doing. Even in its more obvious moments, the performances in this highly relatable Raven production delineate with some gutsy clarity the frustrations of growing older and of taking care of loved ones who hate their own impending mortality.
REVIEW: “The Bird Feeder Doesn’t Know”
3 STARS
Through May 16, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.; $36 at 773-338-2177 or raventheatre.com