Sweetback Productions is flying high. The subversive little theater company, infamous for its hilarious spoofs, just earned the most gratifying review of its seven-year existence. At Thursday night’s performance of Sweetback’s daring homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” a surprise guest joined the audience: Tippi Hedren, star of the 1963 film, who dubbed the experience “thrilling — absolutely a wonderful production.”
Hedren, who was at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign to speak about her California wildlife preserve, heard about “The Birds and postponed her flight home in order to catch the show, which is playing at the lakeside Berger Park Mansion Coach House.
As she signed autographs afterward, Hedren said, “I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t expect the high drama of it.”
Neither, probably, did Sweetback’s regular fans, since this work combines the company’s signature camp with an unexpected seriousness; several sequences illuminate the legendary director’s misogyny, which reached a sadistic peak with Hedren. From her front-row seat Thursday night, the actress clearly reacted with mixed emotions as she absorbed the experience.
Responding to Hedren’s impromptu visit, the thrilled members of Sweetback quickly decided to donate the evening’s box office to support the Shambala Preserve, a sanctuary run by Hedren for approximately 60 lions, tigers and other “big cats.”
During her off-the-cuff address, she mentioned Hitchcock only briefly, saying that he was “so controlling. He told me he would ruin my career; he did.” Immediately after the show’s conclusion, when spontaneously re-introduced by director Kelly Anchors, a smiling Hedren got a roar from the crowd with one line: “Doing `The Birds’ and working with Alfred Hitchcock was kindergarten compared to what I experienced tonight.”
