Kenita R. Miller dazzles in Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom at the Signature (photo by Ben Arons)
ANIMAL WISDOM
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 14, $49-$207
signaturetheatre.org
One of my favorite online productions created during the pandemic was Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom, a remarkably intimate show that I regetted missing when it had originated in 2017 at the Bushwick Starr. But now it’s back live and in person at the Signature, with some key changes.
As I noted in my review of the filmed version, Animal Wisdom is an intimate and rapturous confessional of music and storytelling, an ingenious journey into the personal and communal nature of ritual and superstition, of grief and loss, of ghosts and, most intently, the fear of death, a melding of public séance and stirring revival meeting. Introducing the streaming presentation, Christian noted, “This performance was never supposed to happen on film. I guess that’s obvious. But contrary to what it looks like, it wasn’t supposed to happen in a theater either. It was supposed to happen in a defunct church or holy space, but houses of any kind are deconsecrated and reconsecrated all the time, so I guess we’re not so far off. Anyways, maybe at least yours is already haunted.”
Scenic designer Emmie Finckel has transformed the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre into a welcoming holy space, filled to the brim with hundreds of ritual objects, gravelike plantings, draped green chains, mysterious elements hanging from the ceiling, and a Coke machine, which is integral to the proceedings. Masha Tsimring’s lighting and Nick Kourtides’s sound enhance the supernatural feeling of this collective Requiem Mass.
Tony nominee Kenita R. Miller is phenomenal as H., telling Christian’s story. (Heather played the role in previous iterations.) It starts out beautifully, with H. singing, “We stand here fixed in time / Guarding our houses till they fall / And maybe eighty-seven years we spend unravelling the ball / As it goes spinning wild / As it careens into the night / We take our temperature / Longing for first love and the fight / That we first felt / At first sight, oh / Love may be in the garden but you won’t find peace.” She quickly establishes the relationship and connection between humans and such other living beings as fish, birds, and, later, butterflies, coyotes, cicadas, and elephants.
She introduces us to the ghosts of H.’s past, including her piano teacher Doris, who “sent me a piano from the afterlife. I named that piano Doris, after her because, well, pianos are animals.” We hear about H.’s first love, Johanna, and Victor the poltergeist, who “loves that I fear him. So I do what any little girl would do. I turn into an animal.”
H. leads a group singalong and shares cups of Coke like they are drinkable holy water.
H. (Kenita R. Miller) shares the things that haunt her in Animal Wisdom (photo by Ben Arons)
Throughout, she is accompanied by music director Alexandra Crosby on piano, El Beh on cello, Francesca Dawis on violin, Caro Moore on percussion, Kris Saint-Louis on bass, and Zack Zaromatidis on guitar, who also portray various characters and chat with H. about love and death, comfort and joy. Among the songs they perform are “Well Made Fish,” “Sick with a Beat,” and “Back Pocket” in sections the script refers to as “Introit,” “Tract,” and “Sanctus.”
The middle section of the two-hour intermissionless show meanders a bit, getting caught up in overly religious piety, but it comes back around with a glorious finale, a choral symphony that lifts your soul, much the way Christian did with her sensational Oratorio for Living Things and majestic Terce: A Practical Breviary.
Affectionately directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant (Terce, Practice), Animal Wisdom embraces you as you consider your own grief and trauma, the ghosts that haunt you, but it’s impossible to be afraid with Miller’s (for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Once on This Island) wide smile and warm arms enveloping you.
In another program note, Christian writes, “In short, this ‘Play’ is my love letter to the parts of us we cannot diagnose — to remedies we cannot explain, to the pains we can’t escape much less articulate enough to craft a treatment. It is to the parts of me that suffer still, despite my lifetime’s worth of fighting with blood in my teeth, determined to live. I hold these parts in me every day — it is unending and extremely hard, but I know for goddamn certain that I’m not alone.”
Animal Wisdom lets us know we are never alone, inside a theater or not.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]