`TONGUE OF A BIRD' FLIES HIGH.

Byline: Rob Lowman Daily News Entertainment Editor

Ellen McLaughlin's ``Tongue of a Bird,'' at the Mark Taper Forum, continually plays with ever-changing perspectives.

The higher pilot Maxine (Cherry Jones) flies, the more she can see, but what does she lose in the details? Does she become more detached? Her grandmother, Zofia (Marian Seldes), urges Maxine not to hold onto the ``wrong things,'' to get rid of them, lose them all. But if you do jettison your bad memories, are you free, or do you have nothing? Dessa (Diane Venora) tells Maxine that her missing daughter was wearing a powder-blue coat, but when she points to a place in the sky to find the color's perfect match, she becomes exasperated because it is gone before she can capture the moment. Don't look for what you see now, Dessa orders, but what you saw before.

``Tongue of a Bird'' is like watching a series of loops and dives by a stunt plane. Sometimes you're just waiting for it to crash (sure that it will) as it screams toward the ground. Sometimes you're mesmerized by its beauty and aerial acrobatics. And sometimes you're left wondering if it makes any sense as you watch the pilot put the plane into another death-defying spin.

But in the end, ``Tongue of a Bird'' never flames out. It's kept aloft by playwright McLaughlin's poetic prose, her injection of unexpected humor and a commanding performance by Jones.

The play tells the story of Maxine, a search-and-rescue pilot who has a perfect record in finding people. She is asked by a desperate Dessa to look for her 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte (Ashley Johnson), who was abducted by a man in the wilds of the Adirondacks while on an outing. The girl has been gone for 11 days, and the other searches have failed to turn up anything.

While Maxine's record may be perfect in finding lost people, she has never been able to find the memories of her mother, Evie (Sharon Lawrence), who killed herself when Maxine was 6. You never really rescue anybody or see them face to face, Dessa tells Maxine. You just spot them from up in the air and never see their pain.

The desperate search for Charlotte has released Maxine's painful, pent-up memories of her past, and her internal ghosts become external. Evie begins to appear to Maxine in specter form, visiting her at night, hovering above her bed dressed as an aviatrix.

I don't get it, Maxine says. Why the Amelia Earhart outfit? You never flew. But the outfit reflects Maxine's own attempts to free herself from her confines. ``The farther up you are, the more you see,'' she says, but it has also left Maxine emotionally distanced. The missing girl, bloodied and dirty, also visits her. You don't really want to be found? she asks Charlotte, but she could just as well be talking about herself.

Alone in her plane while she searches, Maxine tries to understand why she fled into the clouds, pondering her fascination with Earhart. Earhart, air heart, she muses, about the emptiness she feels inside over not knowing her mother. In a lesser actress's hand, this could seem, well, too precious, but Jones is so grounded in her character that the moment rings true.

``Tongue of a Bird'' is very much about mothers and daughters, but it's also about women freeing themselves from the confines of their identity. The wonderfully sardonic Zofia, who seems to be having out-of-body experiences, tells Maxine about her great grandmother, who was a ``traveling woman'' who could fly across the skies. You mean a witch? Maxine exclaims.

Later, Zofia laments over a starling caught in her chimney, its wings beating frantically against the walls. Images of flight and being trapped resonate throughout ``Tongue of a Bird.'' The play's opening and closing scenes reflect that. It begins with a woman, wrapped in white gauze like a mummy, fascinated by a glowing, spinning globe, which is a nice counterpoint to the cathartic moment at the play's end.

Strong acting by the entire cast is a major strength in ``Tongue of a Bird.'' Seldes and Venora are particularly wonderful in being able to navigate the emotional highs and lows of their characters.

Director Lisa Peterson also deserves much credit for keeping things lively, and Rachel Hauck's set designs are spare but striking. Mary Louise Geiger's lighting and Gina Leishman's sound help create the moody, shifting ambience.

There are some rough spots in ``Tongue of a Bird,'' but even those aren't uninteresting. In some ways the play is a meditation, but it is one filled with lovely flights of fancy that make for wonderful theater.

THE FACTS

What: ``Tongue of a Bird.''

Starring: Ashley Johnson, Cherry Jones, Sharon Lawrence, Marian Seldes and Diane Venora.

Behind the scenes: Written by Ellen McLaughlin. Directed by Lisa Peterson.

Where: Mark Taper Forum, Music Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; through Feb. 7.

Tickets: $29 to $40. Call [phone].

Our rating Three and one half stars.

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Photo

Photo: Cherry Jones is a search-and-rescue pilot looking for more than a missing girl in ``Tongue of a Bird.''