Thinking Out LoudHaving experienced and sat alongside profound grief this year, I was initially hesitant to attend the stage adaptation of Max Porter’s novel, Grief is the Thing With Feathers. I shouldn’t have been. The best art gets you in the gut and speaks to you in unique ways, and the experience was surprisingly life-giving.
The story begins with “Dad”, a writer, who is struggling with paralysing grief in the wake of his wife’s sudden death, trying to be a father to two young boys. The family is visited by “Crow”, arriving in the middle of the night as caretaker and unlikely therapist for the bereaved. Through imagination and metaphor, this compelling character becomes a vehicle for the full range of fluctuating emotions experienced by those experiencing jolting loss. The crude, rude and indecent Crow serves as an image of grief itself, and an unlikely Mary Poppins caring for the two boys while their father is so weighed down. “I won’t leave until you don’t need me anymore,” Crow says.
The play examines the disruption and offense of death and its betrayal of normal life, the overwhelming gaps and empty spaces it leaves. The permanence and physicality of loss. It insists on the necessity of grief and the pointlessness of avoiding it. It won’t be rushed. The Dad is aghast at those who would have him “move on.” He’ll never move on. But he’ll move forward. Slowly. Falteringly.
It’s an unexpectedly uplifting story – hilarious in parts. Heartbreaking in others. But from the Crow’s inky black existence on the vulgar and seedy fringes of human imagination, he is able to push the family through unavoidable and necessary pain and towards some sort of light.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.