The beautiful thing about Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story, The Birds, is that it offers no explanation, no resolution and no catharsis. Birds simply amass, attack and wait; our attempts to corral the mystery grow increasingly desperate. This also leaves the adapter free to create their own meaning, to project anxieties on to the horror, whether current or primal. In this way, The Birds is always relevant.
The most famous adaptation, of course, was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, which jettisoned so much of du Maurier’s original that the two seem almost irreconcilable. Anyone coming to this stage adaptation only familiar with Hitchcock’s version will find it much changed. It features none of the characters from the film and little of its squeamish family dynamics. About the only aspect of the story that is similar, at least in effect, is the overarching dread.
Louise Fox adapts the material into a solo performance, the kind of virtuosic showcase Malthouse theatre has honed over time – Zahra Newman’s take on Wake in Fright and Danny Ball in Loaded come particularly to mind. Here, Fox champions the wonderfully expressive Paula Arundell, inverting the family dynamics of du Maurier’s story so it’s the flinty and resourceful Tessa rather than her taciturn husband, Nat, who keeps the family alive. She is the one who initially suspects something is wrong with the birds and the one who comes to embody resistance and resilience at home.
The first thing the audience will notice on arrival are the headphones on every seat. This is an aural as much as visual experience, with sound design by J. David Franzke that doesn’t merely augment the atmosphere but situates the audience inside it. The binaural sound technology conjures a dizzying array of birdcalls, as well as sharpening the noises Tessa makes as she goes about boarding up her house or walking to a bus stop or simply smoking her final cigarette. This also means the birds become horrors of the imagination, all the more frightening for their lack of physical presence.
Matthew Lutton directs with a strong sense of atmospherics and tonal control. He’s long been fascinated in the intersection of film, literature and theatre and he manages to find a resonant dramatic vocabulary for this telling. It mightn’t be consistently scary, but it does achieve that requisite sense of dread. Kat Chan’s set design is meagre but practical. Niklas Pajanti’s lighting is highly responsive.
Arundell establishes characters with the barest of resources; whole familial conversations occur, differentiated by the slightest turn of the head. There are hilarious side characters, like Muriel the kindly conspiracy theorist. But it’s Tessa who dominates, damaged and yet robust, resourceful and enthusiastic in the face of unimaginable terror. She’s the beating heart against the storm.
Hitchcock transposed the story from du Maurier’s Cornwall to California, whereas Fox moves hers to an unnamed location somewhere in Australia – at least according to the accents and a few superfluous details. It’s also some time like the present, because Tessa has a mobile phone – although one distracting anachronism has the family gathered around a radio for news. The shift in setting evokes local fire and flood disasters – and it also provides some humour, as a certain toughness and durability in the national character results in a laconic reaction to the threat.
And the nature of that threat? Why are the birds suddenly feeling murderous towards the human race? How long will it go on? This adaptation, like previous ones, wisely refuses to clarify and the result is a generalised fear that presses down from above. Whether representative of climate collapse, nuclear war or just the overall degradation of the environment, these birds seem madder than ever.
The Birds is at Malthouse’s Beckett theatre until 7 June
