Birdwatching is what Roy Tunt (Jack Robertson) is doing in this play – but this is not a case of heading to a local park or nature reserve and taking note of whatever is going on there. He has gone to a bird hide. I’m too much of a city boy to have known before seeing the show what that is – a camouflaged shelter used to observe wildlife at close range. The set design (Jack Valentine) achieves this effect quite brilliantly, with netting above the stage. For a pub theatre stage more often than not used as more or less as a ‘black box’, to see the floor covered in bark was a surprise, at least to me, and this production makes good use of the stage space. The audience is sat, as it usually is, on two sides of the theatre, with both the staging and the blocking taking up the other two sides accordingly, in such a way that there wasn’t, as far as I could tell, a vantage point that put an audience member at a relative disadvantage.
Roy has very meticulously planned his birdwatching session, clearing away debris and rubbish left by others, using disposable gloves when necessary. He has even brought a doormat and a change of footwear – the whole procedure is somehow amusing to witness, perhaps because of its sheer peculiarity. Everything has to be ‘just so’ before Roy can actually carry out any birdwatching, which makes the sudden and unexpected arrival of Dave (Calum Lill), not a birdwatcher, curious, if only because it transpires Roy has some degree of adaptability to unforeseen circumstances after all.
A decent amount of Roy’s vocabulary in the first half, ornithological as it was, was quite impenetrable – Dave’s reactions, bordering on incredulous, were understandable. But the elaborate setup for what was to come was necessary, and the audience’s patience (at one point Roy describes in detail the birdsong made by the European Willow Warbler, not to be confused with the birdsong of the chiffchaff) is eventually rewarded by way of a substantial plot twist, which I don’t mind admitting I didn’t see coming. But before the good stuff, even Dave falls asleep – the play has some cunning self-awareness of how tedious some of its own elaborate descriptions are.
The play’s title, then, is derived from another bird species – frankly, I doubt I would see the show purely based on its title! Once the dramatic tension finally lands, it barely lets up. To misquote football punditry, at the end of the day, it’s a play of two halves. What starts off as something pedantic, if largely agreeable, turns into something gritty, gripping, and gloriously unpredictable.
Review by Chris Omaweng
Nothing and nobody will stop Roy Tunt from spotting his wild birds and today, a stormy December morning on England’s desolate east coast, he pursues a very special mission. With one more tick in his dog-eared notebook, Roy will have recorded all 567 species on the British List. The prevailing conditions are ideal and the time is perfect to welcome an elusive vagrant from the Asian Steppe, the rare and beautiful Sociable Plover.
Roy sequesters himself away in a bird-spotter’s hide on a stretch of flooded marshland. With a packed lunch and a framed photograph of his ex-wife for company, he watches and waits. But who is the tall, dark and handsome stranger battling his way through the flood waters towards him? All will be revealed inside the hide…
Roy – Jack Robertson
Dave – Calum Lill
Written by Tim Whitnall
Directed by Christa Harris
Production Coordinator – Benedict Esdale
Set Designer – Jack Valentine
THE SOCIABLE PLOVER
Old Red Lion Theatre
13 to 24 May 2025
