"Birdie Blue," an extraordinary profile of an ordinary woman

Birdie Blue is a little slip of a woman clad in furry slippers and a housedress.

There's nothing remarkable in her looks or (as a black woman in her 60s) in her idolatry of civil-rights giant the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Birdie would not stand out in a crowd in the South Side of Chicago, where she settled as a child from Mississippi. And few plays are written about people like her — unsung folk who've toughed out the hard times and been plenty bruised and scraped along the way.

Still, the fearless, compassionate Seattle dramatist Cheryl L. West squeezes considerable humor, heartbreak and stubborn hope from Birdie's emblematic life in "Birdie Blue," a short cyclone of a play now at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Impressionistic and sometimes ragged, the piece (which had an Off Broadway run two years ago) employs an overworked solo theater gambit: a character revealing her deepest secrets to the audience, as if she'd just invited us into her living room for some soul-baring.

But "Birdie Blue" doesn't fly solo. It has a cast of three fine actors: Velma Austin and Sean Blake (both from Chicago) and Seattle's own William Hall Jr. And the format's awkwardness starts to fade as we get used to Birdie's salty, candid chatter, and become aware of her heavy burdens.

Birdie's home, in Carey Wong's single set for director Chuck Smith's contained staging, is a double bed and some dusty, heavy furniture, including an old grandfather clock.

And family, at this point, is Birdie's husband Jackson (Hall), an addled, needy "boy man" who appears to be suffering from advanced-stage Alzheimer's.

Towering over the petite powerhouse Austin, Hall gives an uncannily true, harrowing performance. He's a joyful child who calls the dedicated caregiver Birdie his "Mommy." Seconds later, he's a big man lashing out in a brain fog of terror and confusion.

If you can't stare his affliction in the face, you may find "Birdie Blue" too wrenching. And, arguably, the show dwells more on Jackson's condition than absolutely necessary.

Birdie's story is not just about her admirable devotion to, and understandable frustration with, her crumbling mate. The play also scans her unfulfilled life as a mother to one child, Bam (played by Blake), chronicled in flashbacks. Birdie nurses hope in the little boy (and herself) with "dream drives" to pretty, white Chicago enclaves she yearns to live in. (Birdie has her own way of handling the racial profiling of cops in these areas.)

The mother-son bond later frays, due to Bam's rebelliousness but also Birdie's bitterness and bursts of profane anger.

Indeed, West is one of few playwrights who often explores rage in older black women, as a flip side to steadfast strength and religious faith.

Birdie protests she is "no saint," and she can be rough on loved ones — Bam, her older sister Minerva and a troubled boy she befriends (all adroitly played by Blake).

In another flashback, she has it out with Jackson too. But not before our tantalizing glimpse of the couple's sexy, joyful courtship — and quite happy marriage, before illness struck.

By the (surprise) ending of "Birdie Blue," there are still big, unfilled gaps in Birdie's life — if not in Austin's rich and gritty performance.

But in this 75-minute play, West gives us something many works twice that length do not: a raw, unflinching profile of a courageous, flawed woman — an ordinary woman, very much of our time.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com