CHICAGO — As inviting theatrical titles go, “Birds of North America” is one only an ornithologist could love. But the new show at Red Orchid Theatre turns out to be a gorgeous little 90-minute two-hander, a beautifully acted and directed father-daughter play capable of transporting you away from the frozen tundra and back to when leaves were just beginning to fall and birds still sang from the trees.

The other highly distinctive thing about director Kirsten Fitzgerald’s production is the sound design by Ethan Korvne. Recorded live, it’s a compilation of original music and bird sounds and although that may sound twee, it’s so well done as to be utterly enveloping, and, thanks also to the intimacy of this particular space and some surround-sound speakers, it creates an immersive experience. Not in some flashy way, but in a manner that enhances the fundamental intimacy of the piece.

I’ve got young-adult kids, and plenty of friends in the same complicated boat, so I’m aware of the potentially fraught nature of conversations as parents have to learn, slowly, to give up authority, and moderate the oh-so-important life-lessons, while being existentially incapable of suspending their love and concern, not to mention the life trajectory for their child that they imagined in their minds.

That’s really what this play by Anna Ouyang Moench (a writer on “Severance” and other TV shows) is all about. We watch a father (played by John Judd) and his millennial daughter (Cassidy Slaughter-Mason) across a decade of days as they stand in a suburban backyard and watch birds.

Another truth that parents realize when their kids hit the ‘tween years is that conversation flows better when there is a distraction, especially one that allows talking without constant eye contact. (I always found heading to the Chicago Cubs ideal for that purpose.) So it goes here as the daughter slowly reveals a variety of personal and professional problems to her loving but very crusty dad. Eventually, mortality intrudes, although not necessarily in the way you expect.

This is hardly the first play with this kind of conceit, of course. But this writer eschews sentimentality and scrambles other expectations: It is the father, a crusading scientist, who is the more progressive of the two, looking down on his daughter’s expedient employment choices and arguing for a career of moral purpose, a life that perhaps was easier to achieve for his own generation.

“Birds of North America” has had a couple of other productions around the country; none of them had the benefit of Judd, one of the Chicago theater’s most remarkable actors and a perfect fit for this role because he knows how to keep an audience on a kind of knife edge as he builds his character, never making him either too hostile or too benign. This is a really beautiful performance and one of Judd’s best. (I’ve seen many.) Like his fellow Chicago actor Keith Kupferer, Judd is especially adept at playing men who have only a limited access to their own emotions and his work here is, well, everything one could ask. He’s well-matched by Slaughter-Mason, who has the opposite job, in many ways, but one with its own pitfalls, all of which she avoids.

The acting work is not unexpected at this particular theater, of course, but the design goes far beyond the typical. There is just something about the autumnal colors on Morgan Laszlo’s set, as richly lit by Seojung Jang. I was transported.

Red Orchid attracts a younger audience than many theaters and just down the row from me, the moment the lights came back up, a young woman said she planned to go home and hug her dad. Then back out into the cold we all went.

Review: “Birds of North America” (4 stars)

When: Through Feb. 22

Where: A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells St.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Tickets: $55 at 312-943-8722 and aredorchidtheatre.com

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