When Alfred Hitchcock turned Daphne du Maurier’s apocalyptic novella The Birds into a movie in 1963, it became a visually literal thriller of avian menace instead of a character-based psychological tale.
Now comes Irish yarn-spinner Conor McPherson (The Seafarer, The Weir) to translate the story to the stage, suggesting that man may have less to fear from feathered creatures run amok than he does from his fellow victims.
The play, receiving an involving area premiere from Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre, takes place entirely inside an abandoned cottage somewhere along an unspecified coastline. There two strangers ― an author named Diane (Kim Cozort) and a mentally unstable, possible combat veteran, Ned (Kenneth Kay) ― have taken refuge, sheltered from the onslaught of birds that come and go with the tides.
Eventually, an enigmatic young woman, Julia (Vera Varlamov) joins them and a triangular tension ― sexual and otherwise ― grows among them, not unlike the “hell is other people” of Sartre’s No Exit. With only a battery-operated radio to provide updates of the life-threatening crisis, they struggle to keep their wits about them, forming temporary alliances and whiling away the time, as their nerves fray and their food supply dwindles.
Trust is in short supply as well, and when Julia comes back one day from a foraging trek with groceries she claims to have found in a far-off house, suspicions increase about her. Ultimately, though, the goal is survival, which has a way of trumping any doubts or annoyances the trio has for each other.
Although the Mosaic production runs only 85 intermission-less minutes, it feels longer for the play is by necessity an inert waiting game. A waiting game where the menace is apparently going to remain outside the cottage, just out of sight. Most of the effort to conjure up the birds falls to sound designer Matt Corey and lighting designer Suzanne M. Jones, who do a great deal with the flapping of wings and darkening sky.
McPherson has long specialized in tales of things going bump in the night, and his approach to Du Maurier’s tale has a similar spectral eeriness to it. His adaptation is skilled, but he leaves most of the suspense responsibilities to his cast members, who project frayed nerves and tension, orchestrated deftly by director John Manzelli.
Much is left to the audience’s imagination, both in the swarms of birds and the back story of the characters. Those expecting the jolts that Hitchcock delivered may be disappointed, but McPherson’s The Birds satisfies as thinking man’s melodrama.
THE BIRDS, Mosaic Theatre, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Plantation. Through Sunday, Dec. 9. Tickets: $40. Call: (954) 577-8243.
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A theatrical audition, like any job interview, is a power play. And David Ives’s Venus in Fur is a particularly steamy two-character battle for the upper hand between a playwright-turned-director and a mysterious actress who arrives late for an audition appointment that she never had in the first place.
The play, a Tony nominee for best play last season, is entirely contemporary in its erotic subtext, yet rooted in an 1870 novella — Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch; yes, the man who lent his name to masochism. It is that novel that Thomas (Matthew William Chizever) has adapted and has spent a fruitless day’s search for an actress to play the demanding leading role of a dominatrix named Vanda.
Just as he begins packing up his gear in frustration, in barges an attractive blonde (Betsy Graver), who happens to also be named Vanda, pleading to let her read for the part.
She certainly came dressed for the role, wearing a black teddy, garter belt, stockings and high heels under her raincoat. She speaks with a Valley girl cadence that makes her ability to fulfill the complex period character all the more unlikely, but when she launches into it, Vanda — or whatever her name really is — completely captivates Thomas as well as the audience at GableStage, where Venus in Fur is receiving its area premiere.
And so it goes, an audition-cum-seduction, is which the applicant quickly gains the power position, turning her would-be employer to jelly. He is astonished at her acting prowess and her insights into the sexual struggle he has written.
Ives includes just enough mystery to have us wonder if the matchup is a dream, if Vanda is a mortal or a goddess, and what exactly her motives are. Somehow she arrives with a full script in hand when it had not been circulated. And while she insists that she scanned it on the subway on her way to the audition, she also has managed to commit her lines to memory.
We might mull these intentional inconsistencies if we were not so captivated by Graver, who completely embodies this enigmatic creature, just as she wears the alluring costume like a second skin. Graver has been director Joe Adler’s go-to girl for callow young pawns in the past, but here she shows exceptional skill in a central role, switching gears from actress to role with whiplash speed and clarity.
The play belongs to Vanda, but it is a duet and it requires a dance partner for her of sufficient ability to make the skirmish sizzle. Chizever makes his GableStage debut as Thomas, a teddy bear of a man, insecure and quickly in over his head with this vixen, yet able to turn the tables as needed.
The sparks fly between them in this brief, yet satisfying pas de deux. Do not be surprised if you have the urge for a cigarette afterwards, even if you do not smoke.
VENUS IN FUR, Gablestage, Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Through Sunday, Dec. 9. Tickets: $37.50 – $50. Call: (305) 445-1119.