FRINGE 2019 REVIEW: 'Martha'

"Martha" follows the story of the last passenger pigeon, who died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914

Ed Cohen, City Beat Cincinnati

June 2, 2019, 7 PM

There’s a very interesting note in the program from Director/Playwright, Sean Mette, in which he fondly recalls many childhood trips to the Cincinnati Zoo with his father and brother, where he’d often visit the Passenger Pigeon Memorial, which educates modern visitors about humankind’s obliteration of an entire species of bird. The last of their species — Martha  — died in captivity at the zoo in 1914. Mette has taken that memory and has crafted this play, partly as an ongoing remembrance of our short-sighted cruelty to the animals which whom we share this world, but also partly as a metaphor for how hope is still our best attribute, even in the darkest of circumstances.

These are not spoilers; the program gives us the historical facts.  The bulk of the play takes place in Martha’s cage at the Cincinnati Zoo, where she is soon joined by a male passenger pigeon (George), with whom the humans are hoping she’ll nest with and continue the species.  (Even though these are historically the actual names of the two pigeons, I couldn’t help thinking about the main characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and how the play mirrors a similar family tragedy in many ways).  We follow Martha and George through their meeting and relationship and their eventual heartbreak at failing to produce a viable offspring. The last section of the play introduces two Carolina Parakeets, another endangered species, again destroyed by humankind.

The performances are uniformly good, starting with Anna Masla as Martha and Craig Branch as George, who are joined later by Brandon Leatherland and Katie Groneman as the two parakeets.  Special mention goes to Branch, who showed a tremendous physical and emotional commitment to his character and the situation, displaying tremendous agony and sadness first at his lost freedom and then at his shared heartbreak with Martha.  I appreciated how Mette avoided eliciting a lot of ‘bird behaviors’ from his actors; they inhabited a small space, cleverly using several industrial ladders as levels and platforms. What was most striking about the production was how we forgot fairly quickly that these were birds talking and started instead listening to what they were saying. Because the material was presented without exaggeration or parody, we felt the characters’ tragedy and shared Martha’s almost unexpected words of hope.

This play, unfortunately, has too much relevance today, whether it be in the literal commentary on our environment at risk, or the more symbolic sense of how people can dehumanize and mistreat groups  — human or not — that they perceive as different than themselves.  I’m very glad I saw it; Mette and his actors have a lot to say and it’s definitely worth your time at the Fringe.

‘Martha’ humanizes an important piece of Cincinnati history

"Hope is the one thing that always remains...whether you want it to or not."

Zach Moning, Artswave Guide

June 3, 2019

If you think you can’t possibly turn the true story of a bird into a deeply moving tragedy, you have not met Sean P. Mette.

Martha was one of the most famous birds who ever lived at the Cincinnati Zoo. Named for the first First Lady of the United States, Martha was the last passenger pigeon that ever lived. At the moment of her death, 1 p.m. on September 1, 1914, the species became extinct. “Martha,” a production of Autumn Kaleidoscope at Cincinnati Fringe Festival, is based on her story.

I say “based on her story” because she is the main character, and we can’t actually know the thoughts of a long-deceased bird. There are no elaborate costumes in “Martha.” Martha is portrayed by human actress Anna Masla. Writer and director Sean P. Mette gives her a human appearance, human responses, human emotions. He does the same for George, Martha’s would-be mate and the second-to-last living passenger pigeon.

The story begins as George is dropped into Martha’s cage. Both are confused and suspicious, but George — the one who has experienced life in the wild — realizes what’s happening. They are the last of their kind, and the humans who destroyed their habitats and hunted them to the brink of extinction are now making a last-ditch effort to preserve them.

We know, of course, that it won’t work. The pair produce no viable offspring. And they process the impact of that dawning realization exactly as humans would. They grieve. And the scenes, according to the show’s program, are all named for the stages of their grief. Many millions of humans are all too familiar with the devastating loss that Martha and George face. This play asks us to compound that grief with the knowledge that their loss also signals the last gasp of an entire species.

There are countless reasons to be concerned about the dramatic mass extinction currently underway in the natural world, but the emotional burden of extinction on the animals themselves is typically not considered one of them.

But when “Martha” puts that burden at the center of the conversation, it has a chilling effect. Not because we should believe that animals have the same emotional faculties and worldviews as humans, but because it hints at a much more disturbing — and chillingly realistic — narrative. The harm we do to the natural world, as a species, could very well be visited back upon us.

It all sounds terribly dark and depressing. And it is. But the final message of “Martha” is not one of gloom, but of hope, which in some ways is both the first and last element of life. As Sean Mette puts it his Producer’s Note, “hope is the one thing that always remains…whether you want it to or not.”

Zach Moning is the marketing & communications manager at ArtsWave. Reach him here with questions or comments about ArtsWave Guide.