Birdsong (play) Birdsong (play) Birdsong was a 2010 adaptation of the novel of the same title by Sebastian Faulks. The text was written by Rachel Wagstaff and the premiere production was directed by Trevor Nunn. That production began previews at the Comedy Theatre in London on September 18, 2010, and opened on September 28, 2010. The West End stage production's cast included Ben Barnes as Stephen Wraysford, Genevieve O'Reilly as Isabelle, Nicholas Farrell as René Azaire, Iain Mitchell as Bérard, Lee Ross as Jack Firebrace and Zoe Waites as Jeanne. Other cast members included Owain Arthur, Billy Carter, Florence Hall, Paul Hawkyard,
Birdsong (novel) authors and historians in trauma as a thematic subject. The historian Ross J. Wilson noted that this reinvestigation of the traumas of the World Wars revisits and revives the experience of trauma within contemporary culture. Faulks uses both different narrators and different narrative perspectives (first, third and omniscient) on the death in the trenches to explore the trauma of death in numerous and challenging ways. For Mullen, this gives the effect of "[t]he novelist painfully manipulat[ing] the reader's emotions." The novel frequently changes narrative perspectives, using a significant amount of interior monologue, direct speech and dramatic irony. Though employing an