The Gift Theatre’s new play Cygnus now on at Filament Theatre by Succession writer Susan Soon He Stanton takes Greek Mythology and a kind of collective consciousness about swans and throws it into a magical realism blender and comes forth with a tale about the male gaze and entitlement, and the complex nature of mothering and daughtering.
Cygnus is a constellation that resembles a swan in flight. It is also a myth about a man who flies to close to the sun, This play more reflects the myth of Leda who is raped/seduced by Zeus in the shape of a swan and gives birth to multiple twins. In this story Cydney(played high strung and filled with visions by Angela Morris) believes she has had an encounter with an angel but has clearly had some form of trauma which has left her with broken feet. Her energy perceiving mother ( a grounded and nuanced Rengin Altay) has fixed her up with Jason (played with earnestness that turns out to be creepy by Jeff Rodriguez) Cydney turns out to be pregnant with no signs of having had sex, but when the details finally become clear the story becomes dark. There is a father figure somewhere, more mythical than real,so this is a triangulated Gordian Knot.
MIchael Huey’s sound design intimates the disturbing horror of the plot and helps the intellectual complexity of the story reach and potentially overwhelm our viscera. There are layers upon layers in this play– messages and hidden meanings that you may or may not see. If you ask me what this play is about we could go out for coffee and dissect it for hours: it is about how men believe they have a right to a woman if the man finds them attractive (see Zeus constantly), it is about how complicated it is to mother your grown child, it hints at the Scylla and Charybdis of mothering, it is about how the mind will go to extraordinary lengths to protect a person from trauma, it is about how desperately magical thinking will be attempted to avoid seeing what is true. Director Brittany Burch lets all that simmer with no intermission for an hour and 45 minutes so you leave the theatre with alot on your plate. This talented and faceted ensemble manages to be sympathetic and evolves with your understanding of just what is or is not going on. And if you don’t go home and reread your Edith Hamilton you might have missed too much, so you need to go see it again!
Cygnus is playing Thursdays through Sundays until March 16th 2025 at Filament Theatre, 4041 North Milwaukee in Chicago. For tickets and information go to https://thegifttheatre.org/event/cygnus-by-susan-soon-he-stanton/2025-03-01/
For more reviews go to https://www.theatreinchicago.com
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