Producing a well-executed, two-and-a-quarter hour-long, socially distanced theatre adaptation is no easy feat, even for highly talented creatives. However, the Original Theatre Company have done just that. Brought together in just six weeks, Birdsong Online is an incredibly moving adaptation of an adaptation; it is based on the Original Theatre Company’s production of Birdsong which toured between 2013 and 2015, and then went on to complete a UK tour in 2018. This, in turn, was adapted from Sebastian Faulks’s bestselling war novel of the same name.
Birdsong Online centres on Stephen Wraysford (Tom Kay), a British officer who has been sent to fight in France in the run-up to the Battle of the Somme. Being in Amiens brings back memories of the love affair he had with the unhappily married Isabelle Azaire (Madeleine Knight) six years prior. This adaptation combines a brutally honest depiction of life in the trenches with a compelling love story to create an immersive, powerful, and emotional performance.
The entire cast is thoroughly impressive, with outstanding acting throughout. It is genuinely difficult to fault a single cast member. I was especially impressed by Tim Treloar who played the sapper Jack Firebrace with just the right mix of rousing camaraderie and silent despair. Tom Kay’s Stephen Wraysford combines cynicism with painful yearning, offering a compelling portrayal of a soldier hopelessly harking back to a past which will never be re-lived. Madeleine Knight is excellent as Isabelle, who reacts to the possibility of starting a new life with Wraysford with a convincing blend of alarm and fragile optimism. All characters are well fleshed out, with their own personal backgrounds, hopes, and fears.
I was seriously impressed with the production quality of this adaptation. I was envisioning something like various monologues spliced together. However, editor Tristan Shepherd aptly describes this engaging production as eighty percent film and twenty percent theatre. Each actor filmed themselves in their own home in front of a green screen. The cast must be congratulated for the fact that they managed to do their own lighting and sound, as well as hair and makeup, all whilst juggling filming around childcare and other commitments. So much thought and effort had clearly been put into every single scene. The editors did a great job of adding backgrounds, sound effects, music, and voiceovers, and successfully maintained the illusion that characters were interacting with each other. I don’t think it can be overstated how difficult it must have been for the cast to convincingly act like they were talking to other characters whilst all the while they were actually looking at their own reflection in laptop or phone screens. I have to commend the attempt to convey a passionate romance between Stephen and Isabelle without any physical proximity. Co-directors Alastair Whatley and Charlotte Peters made the astute decision to have Sebastian Faulks narrate an abridged version of chapter thirteen of Birdsong, which details the first day of the Battle of the Somme, instead of dramatizing the battle. I was very relieved by this, for it would have been virtually impossible for the actors to have put up a convincing and serious performance of one of the bloodiest battles in human history, all whilst maintaining social distancing. Faulks’s writing is simply stunning and I thought his narration was very effective, coupled with the clips of the battlefield, the trenches, and memorials commemorating the dead. Moreover, the production serves as an important reminder of the sheer volume of civilians that lost their lives unnecessarily due to the incompetence of those in charge – on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, half of which died.
I have very few negative things to say about Birdsong Online. I wasn’t a huge fan of overused ‘seeing double’ effect. I also found it took a while for me to get into the performance and that there were a couple of scenes that didn’t really lend themselves to the split-screen format.
Overall, Birdsong is a hugely ambitious and deeply emotional performance which I hope will pave the way for other innovative theatre productions. My whole family were seriously impressed (even my dad, who has very little interest in the Arts). For me, what distinguishes an excellent play or book from a good one is how much the material plays on my mind hours or days after I finish it (needless to say, this play has been in my mind a fair bit!). If the future of theatre looks anything like this then I’ll be pretty darn happy. Birdsong Online gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.
*Presently, Birdsong Online is no longer streaming. However, it will be streamed again from the 16th to the 18th July! Tickets are £15 and the money from ticket sales goes towards The Royal British Legion. You can find Birdsong Online here: https://originaltheatreonline.com/productions/1/birdsong-online-uk-only
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