According to Max Porter, grief is a long-term project. The pain it thrusts into our hearts can’t be quickly fixed. But his beautifully observed meditation on the subject — a novel published in 2015 — doesn’t immediately cry out for theatrical adaptation.
It’s a vision of loss, inspired by the death of Porter’s father when he was six years old. Fragmented and poetic, it evokes the sheer rawness of grief with memorable economy, while asking us to think about our experiences of resilience and the clichés of bereavement.
Enda Walsh’s interpretation, which he also directs, is remarkably faithful to the language and texture of Porter’s book. Somewhere in London, two boys face up to their mother’s death, while their father shuffles around, doodling and making lists.
Cillian Murphy plays the character known simply as Dad. He’s an academic working on what he calls a ‘wild analysis’ of Ted Hughes’s 1970 poetry collection Crow, a provocative portrait of nature at its most anarchic.
Murphy’s performance is bracingly physical and deliberately hesitant. He probes the haunted depths of Dad’s sorrow, and when he pulls up the hood of his black dressing gown becomes the troublingly ambiguous Crow, a mixture of therapist, scavenger and prankster. Breathing into a mouthpiece that amplifies his voice, Murphy sounds like a la-di-da version of Darth Vader — luring us into a realm of darkness that may also be a place of redemption.
Visually this is a bold production. Jamie Vartan’s design incorporates scratchy graffiti and creeping, ugly shadows. Projections relay old video footage of the boys’ dead mother (touchingly played by Hattie Morahan), and Teho Teardo’s compositions are bruisingly potent.
Yet this 90-minute piece is often taxing, as the technological wizardry and songs by Vanessa Paradis and Whitesnake overwhelm the story’s more sublime and lyrical qualities. The most affecting moments are the least showy ones, when the cacophony relents and Murphy gets to express his character’s isolation and vulnerability with a satisfying directness.
Until April 13
