Malthouse Theatre’s The Birds is suitably sinister, but no sonic adventure

Paula Arundell shines in this one woman stage interpretation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds, but the touted ‘soundscape’ disappoints.

Paula Arundell as Tessa in Malthouse Theatre’s The Birds, by Daphne Du Maurier, adapted by Louise Fox and directed by Matthew Lutton. Picture: Pia Johnson

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“Lights off, headphones on, it is time to be immersed in a theatrical feat of audio engineering. Enter a nightmarish soundscape of flying feathers, murderous swoops and thrilling carnage.”

PR for Matthew Lutton’s production of The Birds – his last as artistic director of Malthouse Theatre – sets up expectations the show doesn’t meet.

Off-the-plan, audiences are signing up for a sonic adventure, something cutting edge and immersive. The reality is more prosaic. The Birds is a (very fine) monodrama with some stereo sound effects and foley, but you won’t be ducking for cover to avoid spectral magpies!

The sound is supposed to be binaural – hence the lightweight headphones clipped to each seat of the Beckett Theatre – but the blending of stereo sound effects with a live mic’d actor muddies the impact of the technology so that the soundscape is not discernibly superior to any other contemporary professional theatre production.

“Lights off” is another false promise. We were in the dark for only a couple of seconds, and that brief blackout was ruined by the dazzling green glow of the unshielded exit lights either side of the banked seating.

Sensibly, Lutton and writer Louise Fox have returned to the original Daphne du Maurier short story (published in 1952 when the acclaimed author of Rebecca was 45) rather than attempt to stage the screenplay Hitchcock filmed in the early ’60s.

Outgoing Malthouse Theatre director Matthew Lutton is the Adelaide Festival’s 2026-28 artistic director. Picture: RoyVPhotography.

The Birds is a dour and suffocating story set in Cornwall after World War II, narrated by a pensioned army veteran named Nat who works part-time as a farmhand. He’s a diligent husband and father, but he’s solitary by nature and enjoys spending his lunches alone, eating his homemade pasty and watching the restless sea birds.

While retaining key plot points, and offering a sampler of du Maurier’s sensuous and vivid prose, Fox migrates the action to the southern hemisphere and the modern day.

The setting is one of those classic Aussie coastal townships where the original farming population rubs benignly against factions of anti-vaxxer crusties and upright sea-changers.

The primary narrator in this adaptation is Nat’s wife, Tessa, an unnamed and nervous presence in du Maurier’s original. (Tessa, uncoincidentally, is the name Daphne gave her first daughter. This is just the first of many “easter eggs” in Fox’s sumptuously over-engineered adaptation.)

Nat has had some kind of breakdown, so the couple, with their two kids, have left the city behind. Tessa tells us, delicately, that Nat was “let go” – Nat growls “let down” – by his old employer.

Paula Arundell spins on a dime in this opening scene, swapping voices and characters deftly and precisely. “We thought we were safe here,” she adds, ominously.

The action begins with a sudden turn of seasons – an icy blast – and the arrival of a black frost. Immediately, the behaviour of the local birds becomes highly aggressive. Like Noah before the flood, Tessa is the first to act, boarding up windows and chimneys, while others, even her husband, are sceptical. The nightly attacks are relentless … and eventually lethal.

The stage is a matt black box – platform, really – deliberately at odds with (or deliberately leaving space for) du Maurier’s image-conjuring prose. Eventually some colourful props appear around the fringes: a Ned Kelly wood-burning heater, a box of Rice Bubbles, and some township bric-à-brac.

Fox and Lutton have solved the riddle of the original story, with its abrupt and enigmatic ending, but they choose not to make the solution explicit. Suffice to say this is a war. And the birds – tiny kamikaze torpedoes – are martyring themselves for a cause.

The Birds. A Malthouse Theatre production. Beckett Theatre, May 21. Tickets: $70-$85. Bookings online. 70 minutes, no interval. Until June 7.