The Feast of the Flying Cow And Other Stories of War

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

A woman with only one red beet to call food stares blankly as another demonstrates the value of air free Tupperware. Living in a fog of hope, she repeats what her dead aunt always said, “The War will be over when cows fly.” Her pessimistic humorous husband, who has been locked in the bathroom for several hours, declares flying cows will create problems for airplanes with not-so-strong trees when landing. A dead woman walks around laughing, smirking, chasing after an Ambassador.

Absurd.

Theatre of the Absurd prided itself on deliberate subtle obscurities. However, there isn’t much subtle about Feast of the Flying Cow And Other Stories of War.

In the 1960’s theatres went nuts over The Theatre of the Absurd. Everyone who wanted to be anyone got involved. It was the thing to see, do, and talk about. Conservative thinkers prided themselves on being part of the “in group” whether they understood the plays or not. The more absurdly off-the-wall, the better.

Jeni Mahoney’s play The Feast of the Flying Cow And Other Stores of War flirts with the Theatre of the Absurd. Unfortunately, Feast just completed a run at the Victorian Playhouse.

When the Theatre of the Absurd was popular, it really was absurd. What struck me with this play, which happens to be way-too-long, is that life as we know it has become more absurd then the Theatre of the Absurd ever dreamed of being.

In spite of its three-hour length, Flying Cow is one that deserved to be extended from its October 6 closing.

With keen sensitivity and motivation, Lorraine Scott directed the exceptional cast on a deliberately ugly war torn set designed by Darren Smith.

The dirty walls revealed shadows where pictures long since sold for food, once hung. Only the barest necessities remain in the scrungy apartment building in an undefined city torn apart by an undefined war. The apartment is where Anya Andonova (Lisa Rosenhagen) and Izak Andonov (Matt Daren) live.

Rosa (Kathryn Gray), an Aunt, lived there up until about an hour before the play begins. Well, she sort of still lives there, even though she is dead. From the beginning her body lies on the floor in another room. Being nothing more than dead weight, Anya accidentally dropped the body.

When someone dies in their culture, a feast is given for family and friends in honor of the deceased. In a dazed shock, Anya apologizes to Rosa In the other room. The only food in the apartment is one red beet in beet juice, a teaspoon of sugar, and a small handful of spice. No food for a feast. No family. No friends.

The war will be over when cows fly.

A pounding on the door brings a miracle. Mrs. Ambassador Nils Merriweather III (Susan Lyles) representing an agency that has randomly named Anya and Izak recipients of food, gifts, and a family photo shoot allowing special prices for prints.

Dressed in a purple satiny dress, a do-gooder socialite living a life of a relief worker under pretense, babbling a hundred miles an hour totally ignorant of the seriousness of Anya’s plight eagerly pushes her values onto the stunned Anya in an apartment with no running water, and no electricity. Anya understands a feast can be held after all for Rosa.

Against agency regulations for Audrey, as she finally allows herself to be called, she is forbidden to eat the food; Regulations will allow her to prepare it. Eager to find out what is in the shopping bags, Audrey tells her she must wait for the official presentation. Meanwhile, why doesn’t she go change her clothes into a more appropriate dress? Anya is wearing the only dress she has, having sold everything else for food.

Nervously wearing rubber gloves, unnerved over having to touch anything that might be dirty, Audrey rearranges Anya’s scarf in an attempt to make herself more presentable for the photo shoot.

Only when Audrey asks when Isak will return, does Anya remember he has been locked in the bathroom. The agency supplied Audrey with a gun she doesn’t know how to use. With instructions from Izak through the locked door, she manages to shoot off the lock without hitting anyone.

Disheartened and discouraged Isak’s pessimism comes out in absurd humor. Yes, the war will be over when cows fly, but that isn’t going to be a very good thing either. What will happen to the people on the ground when a cow lands in a not-too-strong tree? As a bird gets sucked into jet airplane motors, what will happen when a cow is sucked into the plane?

Matt Daren’s performance as Isak mixed wry and sly-edged humor with deep-seated pessimism. Daren knew how to walk the fine line between hopeless bitterness and wired humor. He knew how to cover his helpless situation without being funny just for the sake of being funny. While the audience could laugh at his absurd speculations, Daren could show Isak’s desperation. That took talent, and he had it to give.

Rosenhagen’s performance as Anya takes the breath away as she floats from shock, despair, a crazed fantasy world, hopelessness, believing her dog Obie will return any minute escaping being someone’s desperate dinner, to finally a sense of hope she can live with.

Lyles’ performance as Audrey shadows not so much absurdity as a reflection of what we see in the media and day to day life, wanting to impose values into a culture not bothered to be understood. She demonstrated perfectly that life, as we know it, is far more absurd then Theatre of the Absurd. We see it in politics, international and national. We see it with agencies making decisions for people in need and want without paying attention to the real needs and wants of the people being served.

Rules and regulations reign with rubber gloves to keep separation in tact with napkin holders becoming symbolic of should’s and should nots.

Rosenhagen and Lyles exemplify brilliantly the juxtaposition between Anya and Audrey. Rosenhagen’s fearful escape mechanisms speaking frightfully through her eyes stand in direct opposition to Lyles bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, eager beaver determination to be of help, without the foggiest notion what that actually means.

The word on the street is you didn’t want to miss this show because of Wade P. Wood’s hysterical performance in a dress. As it turned out, that was only a very small part of this significant performance. Yes, by all means, he was comically hysterical as Ambassador Nils Merriweather III in a skirt. That became only a small fragment. His pompous ambassador- type stringent attitude when he first entered the scene, thinking his wife was being held hostage, his pomposity ignorance of the culture he is ambassador to, his arrogance and self-imposed, self-importance-dressed-to-ambassador-hilt, including an obnoxious red sash draped around him, underscores a magnificent performance. How and why he comes to wear a skirt was indeed hilarious, sprouting from a deeply poignant distressing event.

Gray played a dead body in dead weight with such believability you looked twice to make sure she was breathing. When she comes alive through Anya’s haunting imagination, her expressions provided her with one of the finest performances Gray has given. Detailed, determined, expressive, communicating the need with strength power and several honest laughs to pay attention to the needs and wants of people being served.

This production of Feast of the Flying Cow is a perfect example of the outstanding direction and phenomenal casting outshining the script. The three-act could easily be cut to two acts without losing anything. Act II and III could easily be combined. In the midst of Act II it bogs down with overkill of preachiness, spinning in circles becoming more absurd than its own absurdity, driving its point into tedious overkill. Once its point is made, the script begins to slide down hill with boredom.

What strikes with astonishment, is the actors maintained the integrity of their characters in spite of the bogging down. They believed in their characters, what they were doing, and why, living through the tediousness as though their lives depended upon it. That point right there is the mark of highly effective actors.

Karalyn “Star” Pytel’s lighting design provided moving parenthetical emphasis to the wide-range of the undercurrent emotions boxing their way through the time frame. Margaret Smith’s costuming design added significant affect on things fortunately not seen, but all too well understood.

Peppered with absurd but all too realistic humor, Flying Cows provides opportunity for a good many honest laughs, salted with striking uneasy moments of what these people live through, shaking their vulnerabilities to the core, allowing them to emerge as very different then when the play first begins. Transformation becomes honest and real as pretense is stripped, as are their clothes by sheer necessity.

Blatant humor has definitely gone through a metamorphous over the years. What we laugh at today openly and behind closed doors would have given most people heart attacks 40 years ago. Some comics tried to break through the barriers only getting cut off at the pockets. Jack Parr was fired from the Tonight Show for using the term “water closet”. The Smothers Brothers found their show cancelled because their social and political comments cut too close to home.

For the most part, what the media openly reveals today makes traditional Theatre of the Absurd look like a tame game of Ring Around the Rosey. Consequently, we all fall down.

To laugh at an over blown arrogant pompous Ambassador as defined in Flying Cow is nothing. Or to laugh at a well-meaning relief worker sporting the value of Tupperware to someone who has nothing to store in it, or to laugh at the reaction of the relief worker cringing at the thought of a sheet used as a tablecloth used to wrap a dead body.

Compared to what is seen on Saturday Night Live, or Madd TV, or the nightly news. the absurdities in Flying Cow resort to nothing more then just another jab.

Because of the astonishing performances by the cast, and Scott’s direction, this production absolutely deserved to be experienced with the actors’ ability to carry the audience through overkill believing at any moment a cow may fly over your shoulder. That’s a deserved strong statement for a deserved strong cast of distinguished actors.