There’s a particular dread that strikes when the world you’ve spent your life quietly observing suddenly turns on you and your detached position is no longer safe or viable. The new Belvoir production of THE BIRDS captures this with unsettling precision.
This one-woman show, originally commissioned and developed by Malthouse Theatre, is adapted by Louise Fox and directed by Mathew Lutton.
Paula Arundell delivers a tour-de-force performance as Tess, the narrator who slowly realises that the birds around her coastal retreat are changing. What begins as subtle environmental shifts in the weather and small behavioural anomalies of the birdlife then escalates into something far more threatening. Arundell embodies the entire world of the story, voicing every other character while remaining anchored in Tess’s singular, increasingly unreliable perspective.
Under Mathew Lutton’s direction, this production excels at blending horror tropes with theatrical storytelling. By grounding everything in a single performer and shifting to a first-person perspective, it diverges from Daphne du Maurier’s original while amplifying the unreliable narrator effect — almost as if Edgar Allan Poe had adapted the story himself. Like the narrators in Poe’s tales, Tess’s account keeps us off-balance: are the birds truly attacking, or is her perception fracturing? The production wisely never fully resolves this ambiguity, letting the audience sit inside the same creeping dread and doubt that Tess experiences. The horror here is intimate and psychological rather than sensational — a distortion of the familiar into something uncanny and alien.
Kat Chan’s ingenious set design reinforces this beautifully. A simple open platform, a single window, and a radio become the fragile points of connection between Tess’s inner world and the outside one. A concealed treadmill allows Arundell to physically embody the character’s anxious movement. Most memorably, the ceiling is crammed with black birdhouses, and the bird strikes land as sudden bolts of light accompanied by a sound design by J David Franzke that masterfully blurs the transitions between interior thought and the outside descent into chaos.
In horror, audience identification with the protagonist is often fraught. Tess’s character development is almost entirely internal, and Arundell renders her struggle with haunting clarity: the lifelong pull toward withdrawal and self-protective isolation colliding with the urgent need to protect her family. Arundell makes Tess’s internal psychological shifts feel raw and visceral, without ever breaking the storytelling frame. The final image is particularly striking: Tess choosing to stay and face both the external threat and hold her own inner demons as darkness closes in. It’s a quiet, devastating resolution that feels earned.
Belvoir’s intimate space is perfect for this kind of work — there are truly no bad seats, and the production feels close enough to be personal. On the night we attended, Paula Arundell’s extraordinary performance was rewarded with a heartfelt standing ovation.
