A man in the queue for Birdwatching addresses one of theSpaceUK’s female staff,
‘Where are the birds around here then?’
Silence.
‘Just a joke!’
And that is why we need theatre companies like Black Bright Theatre, and organisations like Strut Safe, a UK-wide phone line for anyone who’s walking alone and feels uncomfortable.
Birdwatching is about fear. It’s about not having your fears taken seriously (‘just a joke’) and how fear can so easily turn us against people, even the people we love. It’s also about difference, and what we do to ourselves when society makes us feel that we should hide that difference.
It’s also a very creepy horror story (with lots of jokes) that, like all good horror stories, leaves several questions unanswered; imagination is far scarier than exposition.
Poppy, Amelia and Lauren are on a camping trip. Plodding through a Northumbrian forest (cleverly recreated with coloured paper leaves strewn across the floor), they’ve clearly already started bickering about where to pitch their tents. Or rather, tent, as it transpires that Lauren has forgotten hers.
Right from the start these three characters are sharply differentiated. Poppy (Madeleine Farnhill, who also wrote the play) is the efficient organiser. She’s planned the trip – it’ll be the last one before she goes to Durham University and Amelia heads off to Australia. She’s bossy, she has rules. She even looks like a gym teacher, with her ponytail and blue cagoule.
Amelia (Mimi Millmore), dressed in floaty shirt, and umbilically attached to her phone, is the drama queen. While the other two try to set up camp she lolls in a chair, complaining about everything and just occasionally exerting herself to take photos for her socials. She’s horrified when she finds there’s no phone signal in the woods. While the others are into the map, she’s into the Pringles. Despite herself though, she’s the witty one of the three, her quick comebacks cutting through the rising tensions – for a while at least.
Lauren (sensitively played by Ellen Trevaskiss) is the outsider of the group. While Poppy and Amelia have been best friends since Year 7, Lauren feels she’s never fitted in,
‘I feel like everyone is watching me….I don’t like me…nothing to like really. What if I’m just someone who copies other people? ….i thought this trip might be different and I could show you I was like you, a normal girl.’
Lauren spends a lot of her time literally turning away from the other two. When things overwhelm her she curls into a ball, she has nowhere else to hide. The body language of all three actors in this play is excellent throughout.
As darkness falls, tensions mount. Can the girls really hear things that aren’t birds? Poppy tells a story that she perhaps shouldn’t have, given the circumstances. Someone suggests playing a game – Paranoia. It’s a game of whispers. And it relies on mean observations. Because although the girls – rightly or wrongly – are starting to feel they’re being watched by unseen eyes, there is really just as much watching going on between the three of them. Lauren, for whom our hearts break, feels judged and mocked by the other two. Poppy has her own demons; there’s a reason why she can’t undress in front of anyone. Amelia’s never even seen her take off her shoes. And Amelia too has had a traumatising experience in the past. Amelia accuses Poppy of ‘giving her a look’; Lauren sees Poppy and Amelia exchanging ‘looks’ when they think she’s done something weird aka different,
‘You don’t want me here…..from what I can see with my own eyes’
They thought she wasn’t watching.
‘It’s just jokes.’
As the night wears on and the horror increases, the girls begin to turn on one another. Each one thinks the others are making a fuss – until it comes to their turn. Lauren is of course the first to suffer, but soon the other two are trading insults and blame too. When Amelia goes missing, though, Poppy and Lauren are desperate to find her. When she reappears (in a real Picnic at Hanging Rock moment) Millmore encapsulates trauma in every inch of her body.
The girls’ tent is also used to great effect; Poppy and Amelia each retreat into it from time to time, but we are very aware of their anxious faces looking out. Watching and watched. Always.
When Lauren accidentally (or not) causes the tent to collapse, the girls are left with nowhere to hide. Their terrifying exposure feels almost tangible and at the same time familiar. It’s how every woman has felt at some point, walking home in the dark (which, in Scotland, is anything after 4pm in midwinter.)
Birdwatching is partly, but only partly, about the male gaze. Lauren, neurodivergent and unhappy, feels permanently at odds with everyone. Poppy fears revealing anything of herself – physically or emotionally; she too knows that judgement is always out there. Amelia’s brittle shell covers up the wounds of past experience.
This play works on many levels; as a horror story, an observation of the fragile dynamics of friendship, and a wider interrogation of the imbalance and misuse of power. It’s well written, excellently acted, thought provoking and gripping. Birdwatching is directed by Chantell Walker, with light and sound design by Yanni Ng. The producer is Helen Denning. I recommended it unreservedly.
Birdwatching is at Venue 39, theSpace on-the-Mile (Radisson Hotel) at 9.55am until 10th August. It then moves to the Space @Venue45, Jeffrey Street, where it will start at 13.50 12th-17th August and then at 13.45 19th-24th August. Please note there is no show on 11th and 18th August. Tickets here.
Madeleine Farnhill is also the writer of The Selkie, a coming-of-age play blending folklore with the frustrations of modern rural life. You can see it at Greenside @ Riddles Court at 12.35 every day until 10th August.
*For Fringe 2024 Black Bright Theatre has partnered with Strut Safe, and will welcome donations for this not-for-profit Community Interest Company at the end of each show. You can find out more about Strut Safe here.
