The
Birds
- 16 May – 7 Jun 26 Upstairs Theatre
- Approx. 80 minutes (No Interval)
Paula Arundell goes wild in a new take on Daphne du Maurier’s classic
“How many millions of years of memory are stored in those brains? Behind the stabbing beaks. Behind the piercing eyes.”
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.
From a remote farmhouse one family sounds the warning, but when the threat is unimaginable, and the world seems to be about to change forever, survival is just the first step…
Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 gothic horror story captured the paranoia and tension of the Cold War, and inspired an immortal Hitchcock film. Now, a new adaptation by Australian writer Louise Fox brings this classic to the stage, a version feverish and suspenseful, for a new age, with new anxieties.
I saw this one-woman take on The Birds in Melbourne last year and loved its theatrical ambition, its bold invitation to put the other creatures we share the planet with into the frame of our stories, and above all the superb performance by Paula Arundell. It’s tense, thought provoking, and a virtuoso piece of storytelling from one of our great actors. – Eamon
The Birds was first produced and presented by Malthouse Theatre in 2025. The Birds was commissioned and developed by Malthouse Theatre.
