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Comedy Helps 'Birds' Soar to New Heights

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 20020919
Author:Michael Toscano

Perhaps it is fitting that the Port City Playhouse has chosen a worked-over version of "The Birds" -- originally penned in 414 B.C. by the Greek playwright Aristophanes -- as its last production before the company leaves its longtime Arlington coop.

The late New York Times theater reviewer Walter Kerr apparently thought he could improve upon the work of one of history's greatest comic dramatists, and it is his adaptation (some might prefer bowdlerization) that is the starting point for this effort from director Rick Hayes. In Hayes's hands, Aristophanes's scathing satire is almost ...

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