The play opens in an apocalyptic atmosphere underlined by disturbing sound effects (sometimes a bit overdrawn especially since the sound system of the Gate Theatre is not very good). The time is obviously present-day (Diane tries to make a call on her mobile phone) and the action takes place in an ordinary rural landscape by the seaside, with a lake, a supermarket, a church, a school… In the Edwardian lounge of a decaying house, two middle-aged survivors have taken refuge: Nat (Ciarán Hinds), a man with possible mental issues, and the past-child-bearing Diane (Sinéad Cusack), a woman caught on her way to her daughter’s birthday party. They are from very different backgrounds and probably would never have met without exceptional circumstances.
Clad in a blue jacket with a reflective yellow stripe, supplied with a flashlight and a hammer, Nat’s appearance evokes pictures of war and devastation and I remember the same Ciarán Hinds in The Man Who Cried as a rescue worker coming out of a bombed house.
Through the breathless dialogue of the two protagonists, the awful reality unveils itself: angry birds have flocked together in large numbers and set about scavenging the whole country. It seems that they have been endowed with a malicious cleverness against which nobody can stand. Strangers unto each other, locked in their precarious shelter, Diane and Nat share life-stories, and reveal their wounds. Both of them have unresolved grievances. We learn that Nat has been committed to hospital by his former girlfriend and that Diane has fallen out with her daughter. For both of them it is too late to tie together the loose ends of their lives for the world is going astray. Nature has turned against its masters, and all morality has become pointless.
The rare moments of relief and humour in this bleak story come from Ciarán Hinds’ Nat. Brandishing his hammer as he tells Diane about his setbacks and reveals his mental instability, he is alternately scary, funny and moving. Vulnerable while struggling against his fever-induced nightmares, he arouses Diane’s protective instinct. Behind locked shutters and barred doors, they begin to settle into a routine and form a bond. To survive, they rely, during the daily respite the birds grant them when the tide goes out, on collecting food from nearby deserted houses and shops. The passing of time (several months, actually) is suggested by the quite cinematic succession of short scenes. I felt a bit disturbed in the beginning but once I’d got used to the device, I enjoyed the skills displayed in the lighting and costume designs.
The full extent of the disaster slowly reveals itself through the gradual receding of any human signs of life. Outside the house, the cries of the last survivors fall silent and the radio, which aired the vain chitchat of a bunch of overloaded politicians, stops broadcasting. Eventually, only the birds’ frenetic attacks against the boarded windows and the howling of the wind can be heard. Nat and Diane may be the only survivors in the country if not the world.
Diane, who was a writer in her former life, keeps her diary, in order to make sense of the events. Her musings are revealed via voiceover (an unusual cinematical device in theatre) and we easily make out, behind her monologues, Conor McPherson’s philosophical and theological questionings.
The budding relationship between Nat and Diane is endangered by the arrival of a beautiful young girl, Julia (Denise Gough). We get acquainted with her as she is already settled in the house, staggering on borrowed high-heel shoes. She is dirty and slightly wounded as she has escaped from an attempted sexual assault, and she has terrible things to tell about the outer world. But her story contains loopholes: does she lie or does her memory really fail her when she claims she has forgotten where the food she has brought in comes from?
As the time passes by, the three of them try to organise themselves in a semblance of domestic life but in that makeshift family cell, dreadful forces are lurking under the surface. Julia is young and fertile, her background is very different from Diane’s and she seems harder at first sight because she knows what struggle for life means. She is also a Bible reader and it is she who introduces the main concern of the play with her quotations from Ecclesiastes. Facing the likely end of the world and realizing how fragile everything is, how will they cope with it? Is it that important now that everything has turned to chaos?
The first part ends with Nat’s birthday celebration. It’s both funny and pathetic. They try to have some fun but the tears are not far from the surface and we are not surprised by Nat’s sudden burst of rage in the middle of his acceptance speech. There is a tragicomic incident with a tin containing onions instead of pears (it will have its importance later), then, having blown out his birthday candle and being urged by Julia to make a wish, she asks Nat to dance with her. At the sound of a melancholic piano, they move slowly, clinging to one another, while Diane, neglected, observes them from the other end of the room. Heartbreaking. Curtain…
In the second part, the emphasis is put on the relationship between the characters and the incidental love triangle that unfolds between them. The presence of the birds becomes evanescent. Diane feels rejected and confides to her diary her doubts about Nat and Julia: “I can’t help feeling they communicate something in the silence. All I get is the silence”. While they have searched for some comfort in their physical proximity, she has tried to make sense of the present with her writings, exploring her own past first, then turning to her fellow sufferers and trying to keep her fears at bay with musings on the nature of human life. The Book of Ecclesiastes which Julia reads from, teaches us that apart from God, “all’s vanity of vanity”. But God is dead. Men have lost all their bearings, there are no more books, no more laws, nobody to judge them whatever they do.
The fragile balance between the three marooned survivors is shattered by the announcement of Julia’s pregnancy. Nat, as Everyman, is overtaken by the events, and Diane strives to make him doubt his his paternity. Who is Julia, and how has she got all the food she claimed to have found in a house she is unable to find again? What has she done with the strange neighbour armed with a shotgun whose menacing presence lurks in the background? His unexpected and heart-stopping appearance (a brilliant and surprisingly uncredited Owen Roe) settles Julia’s fate. Mad with drugs, booze and despair, he tries to lure Diane into coming with him and warns her that Nat and Julia are plotting behind her back. Rejected, he leaves, abandoning his provisions behind him. We assume that we will never see him again.
The child to come, instead of bringing hope for the future, deepens the rivalry between both women and hastens the crisis. The poor Nat is frightened by the idea of bringing a child into this crazy world. He just wanted oblivion, he did not think of the outcome, he is only a man, trying to do his best, and as expected, it’s youth and beauty that he has turned to for solace. Diane reveals in her diary her strong urge to murder and Julia makes no scruple of reading it. They have a blazing row. Julia accuses the older woman of planning her demise, but Diane denies the obvious: “I’m a writer,” she says, “I just turn everything up.”
Among the supplies the neighbour has left behind him, there are some tins without any labels. “Pears” he said. But there are onions in them like those Julia had “found” earlier. So it’s easy to jump to conclusions as Diane does. Julia has got them from him in return for sexual favours. He may have been right about the danger. The pretty Julia may have her own agenda. Did he really know anything or did he just try to frighten Diane? We will never have the answer for Nat will find him later “dead in the reeds”.
As for Nat, torn between two women, too weak to impose himself on them, but trying to fulfil his responsibilities, he has kept intact his beliefs in kindness and that’s what makes him so likeable. But he is the prize to conquer, the naïve object of their rivalry in a mortal triangle where individualism takes precedence over a commitment to social values.
If Julia eventually reveals herself unable to kill Diane, the latter, on the other hand, does not hesitate to send her to a grisly fate by telling her that Nat has gone out when really he is sleeping upstairs. To make Nat accept Julia’s departure, she explains that she wanted to free him, and she quotes The Book of Ecclesiastes to support her assertion “I found something more bitter than death… the woman who is like a trap. The love she offers you will catch you like a net, and her arms around you will hold you like a chain.” (Ecclesiastes 7,26). The overburdened Nat does not react much. Does he really believe her? We will never know.
The birds, who had made themselves discreet in the second part of the play, now threaten to break into the decayed house. They have begun to build nests in the attic and Nat decides that it’s time to pack-up and go. But where to? Diane realises that everything somehow proceeds from her. “…because I’m God”. She follows Nat out without taking her diary for there is nobody to read it anymore.
The play ends with the release of a flock of trained pigeons…
To people expecting hair-raising horror movie special effects, The Birds may have been a disappointment, but McPherson has made his point once more in bringing forth his philosophical inquiries and anxieties. The usage of a text as pessimistic as The Book of Ecclesiastes reinforces his standpoint. The Birds is a play that gives us a lot to think about, and the conclusion to which we are led may be much more frightening than a pack of angry birds hacking to death defenceless survivors.
It’s neither Du Maurier’s short story nor Hitchcock’s masterpiece. All that has been kept from the original text is Nat’s name. But many reviewers, probably too used to horror movies, have persisted on making disparaging comparisons, so that a slightly upset Ciarán Hinds told me that he was afraid the play would never go out of Dublin. I’ve already shared my thoughts about it in a short post on The Seafarer’s Blog. It was as if some people did not really see what was happening on stage and kept their minds focused on what they expected to see.
The Birds has not been published yet.
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