'Bird of Quintain' reinforces mystery, legend of Earhart

Even if you know nothing about Amelia Earhart, one look at the guy in black tells you she's a goner.

He's the Quintain in 'Bird of Quintain,' the 1994 musical about Earhart's final flight that opened Wednesday in the Pittsburgh Playhouse of Point Park College's Studio Theatre.

A quintain, according to the program notes, was a wooden practice target used by medieval knights on horseback. If the knight's lance struck the quintain accurately, it swung aside harmlessly. If his lance struck it off center, a leather bag weighting the opposing arm swung round and smacked him hard enough to knock him off his horse.

Here the Quintain represents death and forms with Earhart and her publicist-husband the third point of a love triangle.

On July 2, 1937, Earhart climbed into the cockpit of her plane and disappeared into the clouds of myth and history. She was 7,000 miles short of becoming the first woman to fly around the world. The mystery surrounding her disappearance still generates interest. Only last month, the Weekly World News devoted its front page to a story that claims she's alive at age 103 and growing pineapples on an atoll in the South Pacific.

Howard Burman and Joanne Gordon's small sung-through musical, with book and lyrics by Burman and music by Rob Woyshener, concentrates on the relationships between Earhart, played here by an appealingly animated Daina Michelle Griffith, and three others: G.P. Putnam, her somewhat creepy publicist-husband (Lee Alexander Korczynski); her caring flight engineer, Mantz (Mark B. Tinkey), and the surprisingly distant Quintain (Sean Considine).

The score is serviceable without being particularly memorable. It's pleasantly rendered by music director and keyboardist Douglas Levine, bassist Christopher Astorino and drummer Kurt McNaught.

Despite Griffith and Korczynski's lively duet, which asserts 'We're Really Symbiotic All the Time,' the warmest and strongest ties are those between Earhart and her flight engineer.

An ensemble of 10 adds diversion and counterpoint as a gaggle of inquiring and intrusive reporters in trench coats and khaki who question everyone's motives and actions.

The musical's premise is that Death was an attractive lover that Earhart courted. But Earhart sings extensively about her love of flying for the sake of it. The play's structure and Griffith's performance finds her most often looking beyond the person she's communicating with, her eyes and mind fixed on the larger goal of soaring and flying far beyond earthly ties.

As written, it's a difficult role to physicalize. Earhart spends much of the play sitting passively atop the attractive stylized metal plane. That's a contradictory image for an active woman who accomplished so much and shattered so many barriers.

Costume designer Don DiFonso includes some nice period touches - Putnam's tie, Mantz's leather jacket - that set off his minimalist costume scheme.

Director Scott Wise, who also designed the set with Tinkey and lighting designer Andrew David Ostrowski, does a chillingly effective job of depicting the beauty and isolation of flying alone over the Pacific at night in a tiny twin engine plane.

That's something of a cheat for artistic effect. No one mentions her navigator, Fred Noonan, who accompanied her on the flight and disappeared along with her.

Inevitably, the Quintain claims Earhart as his prize. But you can't help but feel that somewhere out there, her spirit continues to soar through the cloud banks of eternity.

The Playhouse Conservatory Company production of 'Bird of Quintain' continues through April 8. Performances: 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $12 and $14. Pittsburgh Playhouse of Point Park College, 222 Craft Ave., Oakland. Details: (412) 621-4445.

Alice T. Carter can be reached at (412) 320-7808 or acarter@tribweb.com .