Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

Very loosely adapted from Aristophanes’ The Birds, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land is a comedy in two acts. The play tells the story of a human visitor to the clouds, the “Kingdom of the Birds,” who sets out to gain control of the Birds’ utopian realm and replace it with his own exploitative form of government. Seeing that the birds’ kingdom is exactly half way between heaven and earth – and a kind of way-station for the millions of human prayers on their way to Olympus – he seizes upon a plan to capture the prayers (as well as the gods’ answers) and charge a tax to allow them to pass, thereby creating a fortune for himself. Setting man, birds and gods against each other, he manages to hold his own until the Birds stage an uncharacteristically bold and cunning coup to take back what is rightly theirs.