As longtime fans of gothic horror, we were really anticipating TheatreX's production of The Birds. We loved their production of The Haunting of Hill House performed at the James J. Hill House (!!) in 2018, which had the best sound design we've ever heard in a show locally (we called it "staggeringly effective.")
We saw The Birds originally at the Guthrie Theater, which commissioned the play and held its North American Premiere in 2012. Written by Conor McPherson, the play is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier, which was also adapted into an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
The play bears very little resemblance to du Maurier's 1952 story, which has some interesting reverberations to the present. As farmhand Nat works to secure his family from the bird onslaught, he contemplates how government will respond:
"Maybe they’ll try spraying with gas, mustard gas. We’ll be warned first, of course, if they do. There’s one thing, the best brains of the country will be onto it tonight.” Somehow the thought reassured him. He had a picture of scientists, naturalists, technicians, and all those chaps they called the back-room boys, summoned to a council; they’d be working on the problem now. This was not a job for the government, for the chiefs of staff—they would merely carry out the orders of the scientists.
Later, as they realize all radio communications have stopped:
The tapping began at the windows, at the door. The rustling, the jostling, the pushing for position on the sills. The first thud of the suicide gulls upon the step. “Won’t America do something?” said his wife. “They’ve always been our allies, haven’t they? Surely America will do something?” Nat did not answer.
The play also bears little resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's film, which STILL causes me to walk a little more quickly when I see more than four birds resting on a telephone wire. Also, it's hard to forget the famous behind-the-scenes story of Hitch whipping birds at poor Tippi Hedren.
But here's the deal: Although Conor McPherson has a great reputation for atmospheric, slightly supernatural, contemplative thrillers, his script for The Birds is a bit of a dud. One of the most chilling elements of both du Maurier's story and Hitchcock's movie is the creeping dread. Birds are a normal, everyday sight in the world. When they start to mass and then to unexplainably attack, it's truly horrifying.
Rather than building up to disaster, McPherson places his characters in the middle of an unexplained catastrophe where birds, apparently all over the world, are massing to attack humans. Two strangers who met on the road are holed up in an abandoned house. Nat (Tim Reddy) suffers from a fever as Diane (Kari Elizabeth Godfrey) listens to the last-ever radio broadcast, in which the participants are trying to report overwhelming events as they are happening. When the signal goes out, it's understood that there will be no more broadcasts.
As the two get to know each other (she's a writer, he's had mental health issues), they are constantly aware of the ominous sounds of birds flapping their wings, flying into the sides of the house and the boarded-up windows, and walking across the roof. Or in the house?? The fantastic sound design by Forest Godfrey, especially in the first act, is chilling and claustrophobic. The audience feels the same tension as the characters, with the sounds of marauding birds coming from all around the theater. You couldn't help but look at various corners of the theater just to be sure that the birds weren't coming in.
Diane and Nat are settling into a routine of wary cohabitation and venturing out to scavenge for food and fuel, when they are joined by Julia (Ankita Ashrit), a girl who claims to have escaped from an attacker in the previous group she was sheltering with. As Julia sets her sights on Nat, the domestic routine is unsettled and secrets abound. Unfortunately, although the tensions rise among the three, the pace lags. There's very little sense of urgency despite the real dangers of bird attacks, unfriendly survivors, and starvation. Instead, the story leans into love triangles and a rather cliched interpersonal development. Even a visit by a potentially menacing survivor doesn't help ratchet up the tension.
TheatreX's website calls McPherson's The Birds a "gripping and unsettling look at human relationships in the face of societal collapse" and I wish it was. Although the play brings up questions of loyalty and morality, such as whether it's different to kill someone than to let them die, it doesn't really do anything with those questions. We are left with the survivors still struggling against an unfathomable and inescapable enemy, just hoping to live for another day. Maybe the banality and helplessness of that struggle is just too close to home right now.