Paula Arundell in The Birds. Photo: Pia Johnson
Paula Arundell has her audience spellbound in this clever and contemporary retelling of Daphne du Maurier’s short story The Birds, made famous by the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film. That film was set in California, du Maurier’s original took place in post-WWII rural England and this adaptation by Louise Fox is set in a coastal town in Australia, a quiet place where Tessa, her husband Nat and two children have relocated to escape the stresses of city life. They thought they would be safer there. Wrong!
“Why did it happen?” asks Tessa/Arundell at the start of this suspenseful, 80-minute ecological horror story in which swarms of birds, swarms so large they block out the sun, relentlessly attack humans. Like du Maurier’s original, there is no simple answer. It just did. Which is part of the story’s enduring fascination. “Why do the birds hate us?” And why is it only humans that they want to kill? Everyone is free to make up their own answer.
In this bang up-to-date version of The Birds, Fox has made Tessa the narrator and brought in modern-day anxieties. Big issues like climate change and Covid are subtly referenced, alongside others – that raise knowing laughs and groans – like the dreadful music that accompanies being placed in an endless queue to have your call answered. One of the neighbours is a conspiracy theorist. We laugh, but she’s one of many. To each age, its own angst.
Fox’s Tessa, so admirably embodied by Arundell, is a smart and resourceful woman – it is she who realises something terrible is happening, she who insists on trying to keep her family safe while others are pecked to death. She is the resilient and resourceful one. We hear her thought processes and feel her courage. And Arundell also gives voice to her husband Nat, her kids and various neighbours and friends. It a truly mesmerising performance.
Kat Chan’s set is spartan, Arundell tells the story and invokes our imaginations. We never see a bird, but we hear them and visualise them from the words (“shiny black eyes, devoid of feeling) and the sounds – and here composer and sound designer J David Franzke excels. These flying, striking, pecking, relentless creatures are all around us in the Belvoir Theatre, waiting to do us in. Niklas Pajanti’s lighting is also integral to the threatening atmosphere.
Director Matthew Lutton keeps the action taught, allowing a few bits of black humour to break the tension. It’s a great piece of theatre – and may make us even more wary of magpies!
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that this is the third excellent show staged at Belvoir recently that has animals as protagonists. Toby Schmitz had meaningful conversations with a crow in Grief is the Thing with Feathers, and Pamela Rabe has just been championing all manner of beasts in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Now it’s birds. What next, I wonder?
Until 14 June
Tickets: $43-$98
More: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/the-birds/
