Walsh, who won a Tony in 2012 for his book for the musical “Once,” specializes in what might be called the theater of the elusive. Such works are not likely candidates for gripping drama. Still, even as it questions the usefulness of words, it is a book in which words - printed words, as artfully arranged on pages - are everything. In the reading, “Grief” sweeps you up in its jumbled rush of emotions that shatter ready-made descriptions. Porter’s book, a father’s imperious escort through the valley of mourning. And the myth-steeped, earthy bird conjured by Hughes becomes, in Mr. Dad, you see, is writing a book about these poems. This creature inevitably brings to mind Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, who arrived upon a midnight dreary to intone the single word “nevermore.”īut this rara avis is more specifically descended from the poet Ted Hughes’s “Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow” (1970). Then there is Crow, who shows up unbidden at the family’s London flat one night and settles in for a long stay. And the alterations in the lives she left behind are summoned by different voices, including those of her two sons (who speak as one in the novel) and her husband. In this case, a mother has died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Porter, “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers” is an assemblage of fragmentary pieces - poems, soliloquies and Joycean cascades of words gone wild - that try to measure the unfathomable hole left by a death in a family. The book that inspired this play is a densely literary work that defies classification and would seem to defy translation to the stage. Murphy in the robe, you have no difficulty believing that this peremptory, squawking, undeniable figure is indeed sorrow made flesh - and feathers. Thus, early in this 90-minute play, the robe worn by the character identified only as Dad abruptly turns into the magnificent, bedraggled silhouette of an immense crow. But when your world is abruptly wrenched from its moorings, even your most reliable possessions can go rogue on you. You probably have a similarly comforting piece of clothing in your closet, something soft and bulky to disappear into on deep gray days. This hooded garment is both refuge and armor for a newly widowed husband - played by the astonishing Cillian Murphy - in Enda Walsh’s adaptation of Max Porter’s 2015 novel. Bereavement wears a black bathrobe in “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,” the heart-clutching British import from Wayward Productions and Complicite, which opened on Sunday at St.
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