THE BIRDS: Despair Pervades Conor McPherson's Take on du Maurier's Classic Tale

The Birds
Photo by Carol Rosegg

It’s the end of the world as we know it, in playwright Conor McPherson’s dread-infused deconstruction of Daphne du Maurier classic nightmare of a tale, The Birds, now on view at 59E59 Theaters as part of the Origin’s 1st Irish Festival.   

The fiendish fowls are still on hand (we can hear them as they enter and leave the scene with the tides, thanks to Ien Denio’s evocative sound design). But abandon any expectations you may have of a staged version of the iconic Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title. You’ll not find Tippi Hedren swatting away at an army of malignant feathered critters, nor Rod Taylor leaping to her rescue.   

McPherson’s better known works (Shining City, The Weir, The Seafarer) conjure up images of actual ghosts, ghoulies, and demons, and there is a certain lyrical Irish-flaired spooky-stories-around-the-campfire quality to them. But with The Birds, originally produced in 2009, he takes a different tack. Here, the flying army merely serves as the backdrop to the psychological disintegration of a few remaining humans trying to survive the onslaught. The overall effect is less that of du Maurier’s plunge into Cold War paranoia than it is a descent into the hellish landscape depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel The Road.

This is a claustrophobic production, for both the actors and the audience. We are invited to enter the already-small theater a few at a time, and we are seated in a tight circle around the tiny performing space where the play will unfold just inches from us. It is difficult to see for the darkness and the fog and the random projections of equally random images just outside of our range of vision (unless we choose to contort our bodies to take them in).

We can hear nearly indecipherable, staticky voices coming from a radio. If we listen carefully, we can tell they are talking about the attack, which seems to be very wide-spread indeed, so that we appear to be on the brink of the collapse of civilization.

After a while, a middle-aged woman enters, explaining that she and a man have taken refuge in a farmhouse. He is ill, feverish, and she is nursing him. Her name, we learn, is Diane (Antoinette LaVecchia), and his is Nat (Tony Naumovski). There will be no rescue. They are on their own, trapped with their fear between the birds and the roaming packs of looters who will kill for a packet or rice or a tin of onions.  

The imagery McPherson employs suggests that Diane and Nat are the inhabitants of an Anti-Eden. If this is the case, then the snake appears in the guise of a younger woman, Julia (Mia Hutchinson-Shaw), who shows up one day to sow doubts and threatens to bring down what little balance Diane and Nat (after he regains his strength) have managed to cobble together as they wait out the relentless ebb and flow of the birds. 

The three are like the characters trapped in Sartre’s No Exit, where “hell is other people.” They are forced to get along for survival, which depends on risky excursions in search of food during the breaks in the attacks, as dictated by the tides, but, really, it is a question of which of them will lose it first.    

In the end, this production of The Birds is all about atmosphere and tension and the lack of any real hope for the human race. Director Stefan Dzepardoski focuses almost exclusively on these elements, so that when conflicts arise among the three characters (plus one other, a threatening but ultimately equally helpless neighbor, also played by Mr. Naumovski), it is difficult to worry or care much about them. 

'Tis a bleak universe indeed that is depicted here, and though the will to live endures, it is only a matter of time until the human race will cease to exist. A thoughtful exercise in the extremes of human duress, The Birds may be. But stripped of hope or of characters with whom we can empathize (as Hitchcock understood), all that remains is a portrait of lives in despair. 

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'The Weir:' Kudos to the Irish Rep For This First-Rate Revival

Playwright Conor McPherson has a way with the supernatural.  Ghosts, faeries, and even the Prince of Darkness inhabit his works. I’ve got to say, though, that I’ve never been fully engaged by these stories, resisting the call to suspend my disbelief against the Twilight Zone-iness of it all.

Until now, that is, thanks to the Irish Rep’s splendid revival of McPherson’s The Weir, directed most masterfully by Ciarán O'Reilly and performed by a rock solid company of actors. 

There are two reasons for my embracing of The Weir, and for my touting it here as among the best productions I’ve seen during the 2012-13 theater season.    

The first has to do with the play itself.  Admittedly, a one-sentence description makes it sound pretty lame:  five characters in an Irish pub take turns telling scary tales around the wood-burning stove (a stand-in, of course, for the requisite campfire).  

What makes these tales effectively chilling, however, is that no one—neither the characters nor the audience—is obliged to take them at face value, something that is not true of the more recent Shining City and The Seafarer, where ghosts and Satan himself are part of the dramatis personae. 

The stories in The Weir, for all their folklore origins, are manifestations of the loneliness and isolation that are rife in the forsaken rural area of Ireland where the characters all live.

 

Four of the pub's habitués are men who have known each other forever, and their drink-lubricated conversations are  comprised of what are undoubtedly well-worn rituals of idle chitchat, gossip, and baiting.  It is the presence of the fifth person, a stranger and a woman to boot, that changes the tone of the evening and gradually sets the scene for the stories of disturbing brushes with the netherworld. 

From a playwriting perspective, McPherson has done a beautiful job of building up the underlying sense of anxiety, tedium, and loneliness faced by the pub’s owner Brenden (Billy Carter) and two of the regulars, the cantankerous Jack (Dan Butler), and Jack’s handyman assistant Jim (John Keating).  

Also on the scene is the more affluent and somewhat pompous businessman, Finbar (Sean Gormley), the only one of the men who is married and does not have to return to an empty home.  It is Finbar who brings the newly arrived Valerie (Tessa Klein) with him to the pub, setting tongues wagging in speculation about his motives.

Each of these characters takes a turn at center stage, and whatever tensions that might exist among them, their stories and accompanying moments of vulnerability are treated with great respect by the others.   And, glory be, if it isn’t the stranger among them whose own heartbreaking tale gets all of the men to set aside their blarney and listen in silent awe. 

I did say there were two reasons to admire this production.  The second has to do with the attention to detail that has gone into the directing and the acting. Every moment feels right, from the early awkwardness of the conversations before drinks have loosened tongues, to the roughhousing among the men and their later efforts to behave like gentlemen in front of Valerie, to the way in which the others react to Valerie’s asking for white wine in this pints-and-whiskey pub. 

As you watch the play unfold, you can tell these are not natural comrades, but you can nonetheless see why it is they come together.  They seek companionship and a bit of liquid courage to stave off the encroaching darkness. The tasks of the day may successfully mask incipient dread, but the nights are long indeed.

 

Long ago, I spent many hours of my misspent youth at a tavern where, over the entrance, there hung a sign reading “Where Strangers Meet Friends.”  By the time Brenden put out the lights and the parties exited for the night, that is exactly the feeling the production had engendered. 

 

Kudos to all who have brought The Weir to life on the intimate stage of the Irish Rep.  In addition to the cast and director, I would like to tip my hat to Charlie Corcoran for his perfect set design, and to Drew Levy for the sound design that incorporates a background of desolate winds that add immeasurably to the atmosphere.  

Bravo, and may the road rise to meet you!

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