What happens when a famed sinister thriller is stripped back to its bare bones?

THEATRE
The Birds ★★★
Malthouse Theatre, until June 7

Two sinister thrillers from Daphne du Maurier take the stage this year – Rebecca at the MTC in September, and The Birds now open at the Malthouse. Both were made into classic Hitchcock films, though the sheer inexplicability of the avian attacks in The Birds might have helped Louise Fox’s script to fly so smoothly out of the shadow of the master.

Paula Arundell in a scene from The Birds.Credit: Pia Johnson

Why are birds of every known species massing in the air in unprecedented numbers? For what purpose are they launching themselves like missiles at humans, going at us beak and claw? What does this murderous murmuration signify? Why do the birds hate us?

The unflappable Tessa, her depressive husband Nate, and their two young children may only ask such things during lulls in the assault, as their tranquil sea change creeps into bleak survival horror.

Played on a bare stage as a spartan solo show, with the remarkable Paula Arundell playing all characters, this version of The Birds eschews flashy design to focus on intensely rendered performance.

Arundell has a compelling presence and a voice you could listen to for hours, and she slips between narration and enactment, and through lightning character changes, with ease. It’s a terrifically skilled and versatile performance and use of comedy – a tinfoil hat-wearing neighbour is a highlight – modulates the suspense and shapes the escalating tension.

Answers to the central question – why is this happening? – loom elusively in the shadows of the play, which banks and dives through collective fears of the 21st century.

Paula Arundell offers up a terrifically skilled and versatile performance.Credit: Pia Johnson

The otherness of the birds allows meanings to flock darkly in the mind: whether they represent terrorism, or nature’s revenge for human-caused ecocide; whether they’ve been driven mad by some avian pandemic or are in fact fake birds – AI-guided drones, programmed to surveil and destroy – conspiratorial thinking proliferates.

One telling anecdote about a magpie nesting in a school even seems to symbolise the displacement and genocide of Indigenous peoples, and whatever else you might say about it, this version of The Birds provokes unsettling reflection on the relentlessness of the human quest for meaning and the deep fear encounters with the other can inspire.

Giving life to the birds through binaural sound (plus Niklas Pajanti’s panicky lighting, and a swarm of speakers suspended above the stage) does seem a mixed blessing, however.

No shade on J. David Franzke’s atmospheric sound design, but unlike the sonic evocation of the Amazon rainforest in Complicite’s The Encounter (Malthouse, 2017), giving each audience member individual headphones feels unnecessarily isolating here.

Part of the frisson of live horror lies in being peripherally aware of the audience, and given how sharp Arundell’s performance is, headphones compromise a sense of immediacy as much as they augment it.

Still, this no-frills thriller has enough dramatic and intellectual fuel to take flight and, as Matthew Lutton’s final show as artistic director at The Malthouse, it’s a solid swan song.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Sigur Ros x MSO ★★★★
Hamer Hall, May 19

The orchestra shuffles onto the stage and members take their seats. The concertmaster plays an A, and the rest of the group tunes. It’s like any other Melbourne Symphony Orchestra recital, until five men walk onto the stage to join them and the hall erupts in rapturous applause.

Sigur Ros performs with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, May 19, 2025.Credit: Laura Manariti

The strings swell in the opening passages of Bloðberg, and I can’t help it: I’m immediately crying. This is the experience of seeing Sigur Ros live with an orchestra – over the two-plus-year tour, reports of audience members weeping have been common worldwide.

It’s not difficult to understand why – the group’s sweeping, grandiose music, sung largely in Icelandic and the invented Hopelandic, is elevated in this setting, reaching what feels like an otherworldly plane. It might sound dramatic, but this is the kind of music that feels like it contains all the truths of the world.

The core Sigur Ros trio is expanded with a touring member; the fifth man is British conductor and composer Robert Ames, who rearranged much of the music for this orchestral tour. Ames leads with palpable joy, and the four musicians are positioned in the middle of the orchestra, blending in with their concert blacks. The effect is that they all appear as one unit, rather than the orchestra being an addition. Indeed, in the purely instrumental sections, you’d be forgiven for forgetting this was not simply an orchestral concert.

Many of these new arrangements are string-heavy, but other details peep through: a muted trumpet in Staralfur adds texture, and a glockenspiel sprinkles a dash of whimsy and magic throughout the evening. Frontman Jonsi’s signature bowed guitar, often harsh and discordant, provides a striking contrast to the orchestral beauty around it. Now 50, Jonsi’s high, bell-like voice still sounds gorgeous, even when a rasp creeps in – the occasional cracking might make it all even more emotional.

The immersive two-set show focuses on the band’s slower, more cinematic tunes, which begin to blend and blur. The spirited kick of Se Lest, featuring a circus-esque brass section, and the thundering percussion at the climax of Hoppipolla give much-needed jolts of energy.

It feels like a privilege to see this band’s music performed in this setting, and it works so well that it’s hard to imagine it was ever any other way. No words are spoken throughout, until the very end: “Thank you,” Jonsi says. Takk to them, too.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

MUSIC
Alexander Biggs ★★★★
Old Bar, May 20

Melbourne’s Old Bar is an institution. The dingy dive on Fitzroy’s Johnston Street is plastered with gig posters from yesteryear. Pints are cheap and plentiful, and with live music on every night of the week, often for not much more than loose change, it’s a surefire way to discover your new favourite local act.

Alexander Biggs performs at Old Bar.Credit: Richard Clifford

Alexander Biggs is now based in Los Angeles, but the folk singer-songwriter has returned to Melbourne to play small, intimate gigs supporting his second record, Stay With the Horses. It’s a Tuesday night and the place is packed, and he comes out onto the tiny stage wearing a vest, collared shirt and tie: “I’m dressed like a waiter,” he says with a shy, sheepish grin.

Biggs’ dry, self-effacing humour belies the emotional depth and honesty of his songs. Armed with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, he sometimes augments the performance with a drum machine, but mostly relies on simplicity to communicate his stories.

Live, his vocal delivery recalls the likes of Elliott Smith and Conor Oberst, with a slight tremor that adds intense feeling. Lyrically, he echoes contemporary indie star Phoebe Bridgers. These are songs rooted in specificity, describing the place, the people, the feeling, the moment.

This is a raw, real performance: Biggs slips up on the lyrics sometimes, and the crowd helpfully chips in to remind him of how one of his biggest songs, Laundromat, goes. But he has us all with him the whole time, whether talking about the difference between LA and Melbourne, a story of being rear-ended by a teenager on the freeway, or sharing wisdom he learned at university about how to cover up your mistakes when performing. He doesn’t need to do that – the blips are all part of his sincere charm.

After all, the songs speak for themselves. His older track Madeleine is a subtle gut-punch – it sounds gentle and unassuming, but the lyrics reveal a fractured picture of a decaying relationship; live, it trembles with hushed emotion. Don’t Mean a Thing, with its chorus repeating the title, implies the opposite of what it says on the tin. A duet with opening act Chitra, who was once Biggs’ housemate in Melbourne, showcases the loveliness of both their voices.

Biggs is one of Melbourne’s best-kept secrets: a troubadour cut from the same cloth as some of the enduring greats. Our loss is LA’s gain.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

MUSIC
Paavali ★★★★
Flinders Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, May 19

The Flinders Quartet.Credit: Pia Johnson

Tales of musical endurance are worth celebrating. Melbourne’s Flinders Quartet tells one such story. Having weathered COVID and inevitable personnel changes, the ensemble continues to flourish 25 years after its foundation.

Original members, violist Helen Ireland and cellist Zoe Knighton, perform nowadays with violinists Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith. Celebrating this milestone, they joined Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen to present a program that linked their own journey with works by composers who endured significant personal and political turmoil.

In a sharply etched account of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11, appropriately dubbed the “Serioso”, the players dug into the work’s biting rhythms, as well as paying careful attention to its intimate side, where detailed writing for the inner parts was skilfully spotlit.

Despite working in Soviet-controlled Poland, violinist and composer Grazyna Bacewicz created a largely optimistic and colourful modernism that did not forsake elements of folk music and romanticism.

Jumppanen and the Flinders clearly illuminated the clever intersection of different musical planes in her Piano Quintet No. 1, bringing both humour and pathos to this impressive work. In particular, the third-movement Grave swelled to a heartfelt climax before giving way to a truly passionate finale.

Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet No. 1 is laden with the composer’s habitual ambiguity – a necessary survival technique in Stalinist Russia. There was an adept exploration of the composer’s ironic expression of both power and resilience as well as his gallows humour. The death march Intermezzo packed plenty of emotional punch before the unexpectedly upbeat conclusion.

Jumppanen, currently the artistic director of the Australian National Academy of Music, gave of his strong musical personality throughout, bringing a quietly charismatic blend of technical certitude and deeply empathetic commitment.

Clearly enjoying their musical collaboration, the Flinders Quartet is well-placed to continue its enduring contribution to Melbourne’s musical life.
Reviewed by Tony Way

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