Ivan Medenitza, "Puchka comedia", Politica, April 6, 1998
Jelko Yovanovich, "Poslushni voynitzi zlih gospodara", Nasha borba, April 8, 1998
Petar Volk, "Pukovnik ptitza", Illustrovana politica, April 12, 1998
M.O. Dragash, "Let iznad srtza Balkana", Beogradske novine, May 22, 1998
"Sezoni i zamahi", Nezavisni, April 10, 1998
Aleksandar Milosavlevich, "Tri sna o srechi", Vreme, April 18, 1998
"Ludazi marshirayu", Dnevni telegraf, April 7, 1998
Dragina Boshkovich, "Petdeset godina i simbolichno", Politica Express, April 4, 1998
Jelko Hubach, "Velika igra", Danas, April 4, 1998
Miloslav Mirkovich, "Potroshena metafora", Vecherne novosti, April 4, 1998
Sl. Vuchkovich, "Ko ye ovde lud?", Novosti, April 4, 1994
Vladimir Stamenkovich, "Angajman dushe", NIN, April 9, 1998

For all its flights of fancy, “Bird” takes solid shots at geopolitics, argues that feelings of impotence can be salved by governmental intervention. Playwright Hristo Boytchev obviously agrees with the above-mentioned man from La Mancha’s position that it’s madder to see life as it is rather than as it should be.

Entertainment - The Arts - September 19, 2000

Playhouse opens season with vibrant `Colonel Bird'
By Alice T. Carter
TRIBUNE-REVIEW THEATER CRITIC

Every great society is a game with set rules, explains a character in "The Colonel Bird." To be considered sane, all you have to do is obey those rules.

That's the organizing principle behind Hristo Boytchev's "The Colonel Bird," which had its American premiere as the opening production of the Pittsburgh Playhouse Repertory Company's 2000-01 season. In it, the inmates of an insane asylum in an isolated monastery somewhere in the Balkans save their sanity by learning to function as a UN Task Force. The philosophy is, of course, as plausible as it is unworkably simplistic: Just tell that patient to stop listening to those voices in his head. That's like suggesting that all that's needed for world peace is for people to get along with each other.
The "what" is easy to articulate. It's the "how" that's tricky to implement.
Of course, Boytchev doesn't expect to be taken literally. His Balkan insane asylum and its inmates are a microcosm and metaphor for the political bedlam that's been raging more or less continually in that southeast corner of Europe since at least the early 1800s and at regular intervals around the world since the Tower of Babel failed its stress test. A fake doctor down to his last 10 ampules of morphine takes over an isolated asylum in the mountains of Bosnia/Herzegovina/Serbia/Montenegro or thereabouts. His haphazard attempts to create order fail as inmates wait for supplies from a relief truck that will never arrive. Crates of uniforms and food are mistakenly dropped nearby. The patients don the clothing and are mistaken for soldiers by a paranoid schizophrenic who imagines himself as a colonel. He organizes them into a self-proclaimed nation, and they set out to establish diplomatic links.
Director Jonathan Eaton succeeds best when he plays out this tale seriously and simply. The show is least successful when it lapses into total metaphor with Scott Wise's choreography in the second act. Eight dancers clad in white wispy costumes emerge brandishing feathery doves on long poles overhead. It's a poetic, visually hopeful moment, but an unnecessary distraction. He's also supported by Danila Korogodsky's expressionistic set, which begins as a stage littered with a jumble of towers and walls that are used for beds and other furniture. Andrew David Ostrowski's evocative lighting plays nicely off the rising mists of the opening scene, then supports the mood shifts from dejected resignation to confident action.
As order gains supremacy, the pieces assemble themselves into a miniature monastery and then transform into the tank that transports this diplomatic band into the larger world. But the real interest in this piece is in its performances. Eaton is blessed with a company of talented, committed professional performers who bring nuance and understanding to their characters. Kevin Lageman and Philip Winters turn in remarkably fine performances subtly shaded with minute details and never flagging reality. Joe Schulz's performance as the actor-turned-soldier is as restrained as it is rewarding to watch. Mary Rawson's customs office/whore travels the greatest emotional arc in a distinctly rendered, perceptive performance that would be difficult to ignore even if she were not the play's sole female performer.
John Amplas functions seamlessly as the play's narrator and the fake doctor who surrenders willingly to the madness swirling around him. John Shepard retains total command as the seemingly sane Colonel who galvanizes the action.
As a dramatic work, "The Colonel Bird" breaks no new dramatic ground. But it's a stimulating and vibrant showcase for its professional company.

A play set on the Serbian border where Nato planes fly overhead on bombing missions cannot be faulted for being out of date, Jeremy Kingston writes. It so happens that the targets lie in Bosnia, but since Balkan history always alternates between despotism and slaughter, it is no surprise to learn that the play is supposed to be set in the year 2000. This year Kosovo, next year Macedonia: death's carousel sometimes whirls faster but never stops going round.
Hristo Boytchev is from Bulgaria, a country currently at peace, and though the war next door impinges on his characters, its battles remain offstage. Most of the play is set in the ruins of a monastery, cut off by snowdrifts and wolves at the far end of a gorge, where half a dozen mental patients live a degraded life until a disorientated UN plane deluges them with aid parcels. "The Balkans are all the same to them," one of the inmates shrewdly points out. "They were told to drop aid on the Balkans, so that's what they've done."
Combat uniforms and sky-blue berets are included in the aid, and these transform the most traumatised patient (Damian Myerscough) into a UN colonel, who in turn transforms the others into a disciplined and purposeful group, though all of them continue to be mad. Eventually the group applies to join Nato as an independent force, attaching their application to the leg of a migrating bird and scanning the winter skies for an answer.
With Nato seen as an all-providing god, what we have here is plainly an allegory for Eastern Europe's longing to join the banquet. Boytchev is not concerned to examine the nature of madness - the Gate's current season is called The Idiots - except insofar as a wish to join the West might be a disturbing symptom. So the disorganised mad behaviour at the start is something of a trial to watch.
Once the madness is canalised into Lilliputian ambition, Rupert Goold's direction creates an impressive coherence. The bird-catching scenes are exciting, with the characters huddling together and leaning back in unison when the flocks pass above them. Adam Cork's fast, jangling music also gives a fine sense of adrenalin pounding through the system, and though the characters are seldom more than two-dimensional, the performances are vigorous, while the closing scene, in Strasbourg's cathedral square, packs a hearty satiric punch.