Horror stories are never about the threat; they’re always about the threatened.
The threat is never real – but we most certainly are. Any good example of the horror genre will shine a searing searchlight into the darker recesses of the human heart, into that which really threatens us: our fear, our complacency, our guilt.
The Birds is an adaptation by Louise Fox of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story (the same one that inspired a somewhat different adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock.)
The birds are attacking people and, as the protagonist tells us from the start, the question is Why?
But, as I’ve said, it’s not really about the birds. It’s about our unwillingness to acknowledge the magnitude of the problems we’ve created, our hubristic assumption that the way we do things now is right and will always be so. But it’s also about our anxiety, our fear that if the natural world was to turn against us we would be utterly vulnerable. And it’s about our guilt, our sense that we’ve treated the other beings on this planet abominably and deserve to be punished.
The script is tale telling at its best, attention grabbing and suspenseful.
It’s a one actor piece, performed by the inimitable Paula Arundell. Director Matthew Lutton wisely gives us an uncluttered production, one in which Arundell’s extraordinary ability and our piqued imagination combine to establish a mood of disturbing disquietude and outright terror. Arundell presents multiple characters, and does so with incomparable vocal and physical skill. With a shift in timbre and tone, she moves from protagonist to husband to child to neighbour. Her physicality deserves particular praise; with only the aid of simple, but deft, design by J. David Franzke (sound) and Niklas Pajanti (lighting), Arundell successfully creates the illusion she’s being viciously attacked.
By birds.
The question is Why? People may feel there’s something reductive about the explanation the piece seems to ultimately give. To Fox’s credit, she follows Du Maurier in employing an intriguing ambiguity. But there’s a difference. When Du Maurier wrote, our crimes against the environment were largely unacknowledged. Now, a contemporary audience recognises them at once.
As I’ve said, it isn’t about the birds.
But the protagonist is asked Do the birds hate us?
There’s a reluctance to answer this question in the terms of its own anthropomorphic assumptions. Initially.
For me, perhaps the most unsettling aspect of a deliberately disturbing piece is not the reason for the birds’ imagined hatred. (As I’ve suggested, I suspect the audience might feel this reason obvious.) What I find troubling is the assumption that hatred is natural. Not regrettable, though understandable. Natural.
Are we adding to our crimes by projecting our vices on to our victims? Or do we not think hatred a vice anymore?
Paul Gilchrist
The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier, adapted by Louise Fox,
produced by Malthouse Theatre
at Belvoir (Upstairs Theatre) until 7 June
Image by Brett Boardman
Theatre Red 