STRAND REUPLOAD: 'Birdsong' sings Songs of Praise for this War-time tale

With the trigger warnings filling the page outside the door, please see more information before reading on.

​⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Slightly a belated upload from my first Birmingham review of 2025, 'Birdsong' at the Birmingham Rep. The show played from the 27th January-1st February with only 2 more stops left on its tour: Aberdeen and London. Tickets are available here

​Celebrating the original story’s 30th anniversary with a brand new UK tour, Birdsong is a play you do not want to miss. This three-hour, three-act piece (with two intervals!) may appear long but it grips you from the beginning to the end. Fear not that it is a World War I drama, for it manages to hit the right footing of being perfect for avid fans of Sebastian Faulkner's novel, newcomers (like myself) to the war genre, and history buffs everywhere. 

​The show charts 3 storylines through various periods: in Act 1, we begin in a French upper-class home as we meet the Azaire family, among whom is the head of the house René (Sargon Yelda), and his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell). Stephen Wraysford comes along from England to inspect René’s factory and starts falling for Isabelle, who is trapped in an abusive relationship with her violent husband and the malicious colleagues that surround him. 

It is amazing to see Charlie Russell in such an emotional role that is outside her comedy work with Mischief Theatre – she had me gripped from the moment she stepped onto the stage, and her chemistry with the whole cast (and with James Elser, who plays Stephen, in particular) is stellar. The sisterly bond between Isabelle and Jeanne, as well as the power imbued to their respective character, is something that war stories – in all media forms – don't always portray. Together, Russell and Elser – in an unbelievably strong professional debut – do justice to the struggles and hardships of their characters: Isabelle, the victim of her husband’s friends’ sexualisation, and Stephen, the soldier whose PTSD ensures he never fully comes home from the war. 

​In fact, Stephen is not the only character tormented by his wartime ordeal, and it is here that the whole ensemble comes to life with stand-out performances. We open Act 2 with live violin music (beautifully performed by James Findlay) that is punctuated by the terrifying sounds of bomb explosions and high-pitched rings. Alongside best friends Jack and Lebrun (Max Bowden and Tama Phetheam), as well as the younger soldiers in the battalion Tipper and Evans (Raif Clarke and Joseph Benjamin Baker), we journey through the 60 ft man-made tunnels of World War I, with tensions dialled up to a hundred from the life-or-death stakes being higher than ever. Rachel Wagstaff’s writing shines in this adaptation of Birdsong through the dynamics of each family member and soldier we meet, however brief their appearance is. 

As our storylines weave and coalesce throughout the show, the narratives and relationships can sometimes be confusing, exacerbated by unclear time jumps and repeated switches in points of view. There are additionally a few gaps in the Western front timeline that I would have been intrigued to explore further, including how our evidently green and wide-eyed company soldiers were drafted into and acclimatised onto the battlefield. 

​Richard Kent’s set design is minimalist but does the job right with hidden set pieces behind fabrics and an upper light panel that is expertly used to transform from an upper-class home to a below-the-ground tunnel in less than ten seconds. The work of Jason Taylor as lighting designer to blend everything together is among the best I’ve seen. Ultimately, this play is incredible – the expert blend of theatre and military is something that has been done hundreds of times but this one will have a special place in my heart. It is not to be missed by those who love stories of the wars.