I’m no fan of seagulls – only the other day, one of them snatched a sandwich out of my hand – but I’ve never thought of them as being quite as nasty as they appear in this reworking of the Hans Christian Andersen tale.
Played by Jo Clifford, the seagull that intrudes on Maria MacDonell’s mother duck as she tends to her “problem family” has been schooled in rightwing survivalist ideology. It squawks at her to “put sentimentality aside”, to let nature take its course and to discard the “wet, wide-eyed and very, very large” duckling that has appeared in her nest. The bird’s “every gull for themselves” philosophy is as brutal as it is selfish. [READ MORE]