Review: Animal Wisdom Digs Its Claws Into the Ground as It Reaches for Heaven

In Animal Wisdom, Heather Christian—by way of Herculean performer Kenita Miller—tells us that she hails from a long line of headache-suffering musicians both blessed and cursed by ghostly visitors. The chords of the universe are the next dimension’s radio waves, and Christian (and her ancestors) are dialed in. Now that we’re occupying her space (the sacred realm of Signature Theatre’s Romulus Linney Courtyard where her Oratorio for Living Things ran last year), we’re vibrating at her frequency and are about to perform a ritual that will put the souls of all our dead to rest. As a bonus, our own souls might get a little respite too.

It’s been nearly 10 years since the composer-playwright performed this genre-stretching, -bending, and -transmogrifying piece of autobiography herself at the Bushwick Starr. It was Christian’s introduction to New York audiences as an artist brazenly reaching for transcendence and daring skeptics to shrug her off as, to use the technical term, “woo-woo.” But regardless of your tolerance for the ethereal, spiritual, or supernatural, Christian’s work has a distinct sense of humility. It’s clear-eyed and earth-bound, even when the subject matter suggests it should be floating away. And when someone writes music this soul-stirring, you ought to believe they know a thing or two about souls.

You can say the same for Miller, whose rich voice and open heart make her a divine vessel for Christian’s blend of folk, gospel, and blues. She first greets the audience as herself, explaining how she’ll be performing the role of “H” before taking on the first-person perspective of a child raised in Natchez, Mississippi. From there, she introduces the topic of ground erosion, sings about haunted gardens, and warns about the elevated ghost activity during rainstorms. The natural and spiritual realms are intertwined, and set designer Emmie Finckel takes that assignment seriously with a stage full of plant life while nooks and crannies cradle altars for the dead (Masha Tsimring’s lighting similarly fluctuates from earthy to spectral).

Still, the human realm is where Miller spends most of the two-hour performance touring us around. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that all three realms are porous enough in Christian’s universe (directed with equal fluidity by Keenan Tyler-Oliphant) to all meld together. A lit cigarette replaces the traditional altar candle; prayers are consecrated with Coca-Cola; and the musicians sending us to heaven get to bring their ordinary names, faces, and personalities to the table (a spontaneous question pulled from a fishbowl had the band members share their spiritually kindred day of the week at my performance).

Inheritance, time, grief, mortality, fear, love. Animal Wisdom tries to wrap its arms around it all. And because Christian sees the dimension where these big topics interlace, she bear-hugs more than you’d think she could. Though, the fact that several spoken moments are an exegesis of her dense lyrics suggests even she knows her music is not for one-time listeners (sound designer Nick Kourtides also sacrifices some clarity for emotional effect).

Of course, this is not traditional musical theater, so Animal Wisdom doesn’t have to play by its rules of digestibility. And it decidedly does not as the audience sits in total darkness for 30 minutes while a final requiem plays out onstage. Like an overlong church service, you can feel the crowd’s restlessness in the void as one song bleeds into the next. But if it were easy to coax a soul into repose, Mozart would have saved his ink.