Paula Arundell Will Bring One-Woman Show THE BIRDS to Belvoir St Theatre
Louise Fox adapts Daphne du Maurier's ecological horror story for a climate-conscious era
Paula Arundell (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Angels in America, Sonia Friedman Productions' Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) will go head to head with wild in the Sydney premiere of Louise Fox's adaptation of The Birds, from 16th May to 7th June.
Daphne Du Maurier's 1952 gothic horror story captured the paranoia and tension of the Cold War and inspired an immortal Hitchcock film. Now, a new adaptation brings this classic to the stage, a version feverish and suspenseful, for a new age, with new anxieties.
Nature isn't behaving. The weather is doing strange things, the sea and sky sound different, and things that were once innocent, benign, harmless, are taking on dark and alarming aspects.
From a remote farmhouse one family sounds the warning, but when the threat is unimaginable, and the world seems to be about to change forever, survival is just the first step…
Belvoir Artistic Director Eamon Flack said, “I saw this one-woman take on The Birds in Melbourne last year and loved its theatrical ambition, its bold invitation to put the other creatures we share the planet with into the frame of our stories, and above all the superb performance by Paula Arundell. It's tense, thought provoking, and a virtuoso piece of storytelling from one of our great actors”.
The Birds is adapted by award-winning writer Louise Fox (TV's The Glitch), directed by Matthew Lutton (Love Me Tender, Malthouse's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Solaris), with sound design by J. David Franzke (Malthouse's Because the Night). The Birds was first produced and presented by Malthouse Theatre in 2025. The Birds was commissioned and developed by Malthouse Theatre.
Performances run 16th May – 7th June 2026.
