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A Murder of Crows

by Mac Wellman
review in SF Chronicle by Steve Winn

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A FLIGHTY `MURDER OF CROWS'

Heartland America of the early 1990s is a toxic
dump in ``A Murder of Crows,'' Mac Wellman's
short absurdist comedy at Exit Stage Left. One
small-town character dies in a vat of radioactive
waste. A Gulf War vet (Noah Kelly) has become a
gilded statue who rarely speaks. A trio of deadpan
crows tosses off some fluttery, Fosse-like dance
moves and riffs on epistemology. Wellman, the
prolific former playwright-in-residence at the
American Conservatory Theater, is riffing pretty
wildly himself here. In this first of his four ``Crow''
plays, he flits from one blight to another. Pollution,
ethnic hatred, CIA trench coats, a spiteful rich
woman with a rivet in her beehive hairdo speed by
in this scattershot piece set in a rundown backyard.

Director Kevin E. Humbert's Crowded Fire
production, like the script, has its bumpy moments
and obtuse qualities. Several actors mug and wring
their lines too hard for their limited comic juice.

But there's something antic and droll underneath.
Jessica Jackson gives a surprisingly soulful
performance as a haunted prophet of doom. She
looks both stricken and calmly accepting of her fate:
to join the black-hearted crows.

Niftily choreographed by Rebecca Salzer, these
birds belong near the Gulf War statue. Their dances
and philosophical squawks make as much sense as
that surreal war.

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