Robert Leitner with Natalie Pepe-Francis, Tipelo Hildebrand and Alice Marin in Pigeon! | Photo by Sophie Bouey
Bringing some ghoulish vibes into the snuggly Assembly Theatre on Queen West, Bird On Stage Productions presents a very short run of murder and mad ravings most foul! Playwright and co-director himself, Garrett M. Ryan Abrams, is the first person we meet. He’s our narrator, a sort urban hipster Rod Serling, who bookends this Toronto Twilight Zone-esque offering. Pigeon! drags us down into the story of John, a young man in this very city who, in addition to being a really nasty piece of work, is surrounded by an assortment of wacky weirdos as neurotic as himself.
Robert Leitner, who also co-directed this outlandish piece of local Grand Guignol, plays John as a Joker-adjacent anti-hero. He’s sullen and put upon and I think we’re meant to feel rather badly for him, initially at least. His mother (Tipelo Hildebrand) is a monstrous portrait of maternal bullying. In a flashback to his youth, school girls are mean to him. He’s got an offbeat, jarring energy that alienates people. His only refuge is the park bench and his cherished birds. He seems to think they get him.
This boy and his birds tale doesn’t go in the heartwarming, eccentrically inspiring direction prescribed by all the tropes that have been riffed on thus far. No, when he acquires birds of his own, he ends up killing them all and collecting their feathery little carcasses in a bag. It isn’t long before his murderous intentions progress to people. Inspired by Frankenstein, he obsesses over his beloved creation. The ever-growing, gruesome contents of the bag—each hacked out piece of human and fowl anatomy—get him ever-closer to the realization of his monster-confidante-god thing—Pigeon!
There’s a lot of Shelley in there… and some Lovecraft.
In addition to pulling from macabre classics of literature and cinema, Pigeon! is also drenched in Jewish trauma. A harrowing tale of Holocaust survival figures into the backstory of a disturbed old man named Ivan (Alice Marin) who seems to be a ghastly soul mate for John. Told in a crude shadow-puppet sequence, awkward yet weirdly effective, his tale has an abject authenticity. John’s grisly plans also come up against points of Jewish doctrine and John must contend with a cultural history in addition to his own angst.
Though we are given some insight into his pathology with an episode from his childhood, I could never really feel much sympathy for John. I found him, at best, irritating, at worst, repulsive. I didn’t find his little quips or observations funny nor intriguing; though Leitner is a compelling presence regardless. I wasn’t sure, at first, how I felt about his jester make-up as it seemed, at first, an unnecessary stylistic indulgence. As the story’s cartoonish and absurd violence escalates, and John becomes increasingly deranged, his make-up subtly wears away in sweat and violent contact. Paradoxically, his human face is gradually more recognizable as his humanity becomes more dubious.
That said, I do think the supporting characters are significantly more intriguing than John. Hildebrand, Marin and Natalie Pepe-Francis—who serve as a sort of eldritch chorus—play a number of idiosyncratic oddballs with compelling predilections. Pepe-Francis’ germ-phobic rabbi is hilarious, but I just adored her libidinous elderly Agnes—what a character! Hildebrand’s mother is a disturbingly on point caricature until she’s suddenly real. Ivan is Marin’s juiciest part, but I also enjoyed her slightly off pet shop owner.
Pigeon! is rough around the edges. The minimalist aesthetic—gory props and garish lighting—work well, though the production could use a little polish here and there. Some sound cues are jarring and janky. It gets uncomfortably histrionic and melodramatic at the end. A tasteful and nuanced approach wouldn’t serve this story well. No, its grotesquerie is this show’s greatest charm, though I wonder if it could be more fully resonant if I actually cared about John.
He’s part of a tradition of uncomfortably compelling, murderous protagonists like Norman Bates and Sweeney Todd—even some real-life counterparts like Lizzie Borden are rattling about in him. I sense that I’m expected to genuinely invest in him, recognize that circumstances can play a role in someone’s villainy. Not like him exactly, because he’s truly vile, but care. I don’t. And I think that diminishes the impact considerably. Overall though, Pigeon! is deliciously lurid, featuring some comically horrific props and performances fully committed to over-the-top, freaky antics.
Pigeon!
August 21 to 24, 2025
The Assembly Theatre (1479 Queen Street West)
85 minutes (no intermission)
Alice Marin with Natalie Pepe-Francis and Tipelo Hildebrand (background) in Pigeon! | Photo by Sophie Bouey