The beautiful thing about Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story, The Birds, is that it offers no explanation, no resolution and no catharsis. Birds simply amass, attack and wait; our attempts to corral the mystery grow increasingly desperate. This also leaves the adapter free to create their own meaning, to project anxieties on to the horror, whether current or primal. In this way, The Birds is always relevant.
The most famous adaptation, of course, was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, which jettisoned so much of du Maurier’s original that the two seem almost irreconcilable. Anyone coming to this stage adaptation only familiar with Hitchcock’s version will find it much changed. It features none of the characters from the film and little of its squeamish family dynamics. About the only aspect of the story that is similar, at least in effect, is the overarching dread.
