Conor McPherson's "The Birds"

Spore

McPherson's adaptation of the famous De Maurier short story has kicked off it's 'world premier' at the Gate. I attended the interview he gave at the Gate during the culture day and was duly informed by the man himself that the play is in no way inspired by the Hitchcock film, he uses only the source material (which I haven't read and won't comment on).

Impression? First of all the acting is top drawer as you'd expect from that cast, they're all perfect and shine throughout, where perhaps the narrative dips... The set's rather splendid - an Edwardian living room with big French windows, winding staircase, landscape paintings and the ominously boarded up windows...

Less impressive is the sound design. Too much, too overblown and the score is awful.

Very troubling is McPherson's play itself. There I said it. The pacing's all over the place. I better get my spoiler on from here on in.

The whole apocalypse theme is never more than a mere device that gets in the way of what potentially is a very interesting love triangle (note the birds are practically absent from the second act and pale into utter insignificance by the end). The farmer's presence becomes a frustrating cul de sac, he initally promises to muddy the waters, add an existential frame to the narrative perhaps, only to be found "dead in the reeds" later as Ciaran Hinds's character causally informs us. In fact there's a lot of cul de sacs and plot holes in the narrative. Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why are they here? Weeks pass by in seconds the stage management is hopeless in informing the audience of the chronology. Essentially the play is film - or at least of the scope of a film's narrative, compressing so much time in so short a space and using typical filmic elements such as voice over, non-diegetic narratives (the radio broadcasts at the start) and time dissolves.

So after all that spoiler-clad criticism I'll give it a generous 6 out of 10. But then again I'm very fond of traditional McPherson and perhaps I don't want him going off on these tangents.

acermaple

A bit uneven in parts perhaps but over all atmospheric, post apocalyptic and tense-have to say I enjoyed it.

Morlar

Went to see this last week and found it very impressive. The way the lighting in particular was used to show the passage of time was very nicely done. Overall lighting and set design were brilliant. The sound design was just about right too though maybe slightly overboard from time to time. Ciaran Hinds is a fantastic actor as is Denise Gough, they were both very natural and believable on stage. Sinead Cusack is a great actress but I could not help feeling that she is slightly too old for this part, yes the part called for an older woman but even so I felt she was slightly too old. I do not know if the part was adapted/written by mcpherson from du maurier with her in mind but that was the one element that bothered me. I had no issues with the pacing of this or the plot development throughout.

The transition of time using costume, lighting and sound effects etc presented no issues as far as I was concerned. I thought the dynamic between the first 2 then 3 characters and how they related before and after the transition from 2 to 3 people & then with the external factors & information was what made it interesting. The apocalypse backdrop was never going to be the interesting part of it (for me anyway) so I did not find that dissappointing at all.

In a numbers out of 10 rating I would give it 8/10 and highly recommend it.