Do Birds Hide to Die?

I’ve often wondered why both the rural and urban landscape is not littered with dead birds. Do Birds Hide to Die provides no answer - and the play is not about dead birds, although there is a treasured one in the small tin that Violet (Eleanor Cobb) carries in procession from the back of the theatre, accompanied by her mother, Lily (Fanny Le Pironnec). They ceremoniously bury it before the flashback ends.

Both performances are captivating

Lily is writing a book, but is struggling to find an ending to her story. As she sits alone at her desk, she is haunted by the recurring presence of her deceased daughter - a destructive loop of fraught emotions. She tries to push them aside, but there is no escaping the memories of the short time they spent together. Sequences of trying to keep the house tidy are repeated in her mind as she remembers how Violet messed it up with her drawings scattered around the floor. Then she recalls the game Violet played of seeing how long she could hold her breath while submerged in the bath.

Violet never knew her father, but desperately wants to be told about him. For Lily, it is a painful recollection, suggested only in a brief movement sequence - a story she will never tell. She always ignores the question and changes the subject. Violet resumes her fascination with birds, and where they - and people - go when they die.

Cobb beautifully captures the characteristics of a child through movement, facial expressions and vocal delivery. Le Pironnec, meanwhile, conveys the stress of a single parent: the attempts to balance caring for her daughter with trying to finish her book and keep the house tidy. That’s how life was, but now she has only trauma and memory to occupy her life of solitude.

Both performances are captivating and shine above the play itself, which is complex and often confusing. Yet for those who like to speculate about meaning and weave their own experiences and emotions into a story, it is probably fertile territory.