Belvoir St Theatre is soon to stage a fresh new adaption of Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 ecological horror story, The Birds. With this new adaptation writer and adapter Louise Fox brings fervour and suspense for a new age, with new anxieties.
“I was keen to get back to theatre and work with Matt Lutton again and we’d talked about a few things, but when he suggested I read the du Maurier short story again, and I did, I was immediately intrigued,” says Fox. “Without being reductive or illustrative, the ideas in the work – how individuals and communities react to catastrophe, the description of a revolt within nature against human beings inside a story that had intrinsically great narrative architecture – seemed deeply relevant to today and very adaptable to the stage. All issues that resonate for me personally. Plus transforming the central character into a contemporary woman and mother made it an even more personal lens for me.”
Initially written during the paranoia and tension of the cold war, Fox’s adaptation uses the protagonist to the full to explore the themes relating to our modern-day angst.
“Species loss, the climate, covid, AI etc take your pick… our world is full of existential threats that weren’t present in the du Maurier that we’re all trying to grapple with. I would say in the du Maurier, the bird attacks are not something that the protagonist tries to deeply understand and grapple with. It’s more action and there isn’t much insight into the character like this Tessa has.”
And what sorts of audience conversation does Fox hope the play will engender? Well, says Fox, I’m not sure that it’s theatre’s job to overtly steer the conversation, thematically.
“The drama asks a lot of “what if” questions within it…and because it’s one person on stage intimately going through a huge ordeal with us as the witnesses, it begs a response in a way that only theatre can. What would we do in the same circumstances?”
As a completely new staging of the work, what should fans of the original expect?
Says Fox, “The bones of the story – its escalation, its shape, its rises and falls – are all still there, as are many of the ideas and images. But this is told through a whole new set of characters with echoes of the original story but in a modern, Australian setting.”
Acknowledging du Maurier’s was filled with great atmosphere and tension, Fox says she’s stayed close to the beats of the story and the way the escalation creeps up on you. But she’s kept it close to a different central character. “One who is a mother, and has children to protect, who isn’t believed at the start and becomes a heroic figure over the course of the play. ”
As a creative Fox’s range is wide and varied. She admits she’s pretty much done most things, genre wise – crime, family drama, mystery, elevated sci-fi, period, farce, thriller. Everything but rom-com. She will if she can, centre a female perspective, but not exclusively. “I like high stakes and complex characters and shows that have pace.”
What, for Fox, is the most fulfilling part about adapting another writer’s work and then creating something based on that?
“If they’re a good writer they’ve given you great ideas, images and architecture to build something from and you feel like you’re in a great mind-to-mind conversation when you’re working that closely with another writers’ text. It’s also great to move something from one form (prose) to another form (theatre).
Nature isn’t behaving. The weather is doing strange things, the sea and sky sound different, and things that were once innocent, benign, harmless, are taking on dark and alarming aspects. Paula Arundell delivers a gripping one‑woman performance in this unnerving and relevant adaptation of a classic.
Says Fox, “It’s a ripping great thrilling yarn, that does not let up for a second. It’s got humour and thrill and loads of emotion, action, and incident. It’s also staged beautifully by the whole team. The birds are all done through light and sound (it’s a great act of imagination) and Paula Arundell is an Olympian of the stage. Watching one fine actor at the top of their game being virtuosic, in a way that only theatre actors can be, playing every character is definitely worth seeing. Plus, it’s only an hour and a half.”
May 16 – June 7
The Birds – Belvoir St Theatre
Image: Pia Johnson
