{"id":126325,"date":"2025-11-09T14:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/126325\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T14:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T14:24:09","slug":"cillian-murphys-manifestation-of-crow-on-stage-was-a-great-thing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/126325\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cillian Murphy\u2019s manifestation of Crow on stage was a great thing\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the evening before the London premiere of the keenly anticipated film The Thing With Feathers. Max Porter<\/a>, author of the novella<\/a> on which it is based, and Benedict Cumberbatch<\/a>, its star, are, rather unexpectedly, chatting about Dwayne Johnson \u2013 aka the Rock \u2013 in The Smashing Machine<\/a>, Benny Safdie\u2019s bruising biopic of the MMA pioneer Mark Kerr.<\/p>\n

Johnson \u201cwas saying at the junket that it\u2019s the first time he didn\u2019t think about box office\u201d, Porter says. \u201cA lot of people called bullshit. But, actually, I don\u2019t ever think about the box office.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think about collaboration. Think about the relationship you have with the person you\u2019re sitting with in a room, saying, \u2018Here\u2019s a way of doing this character on screen.\u2019 Deal with that. Then I meet Benedict and talk to him about the relationship he\u2019s going to have with his character.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHang on,\u201d Cumberbatch says. \u201cLet\u2019s go back to the Rock<\/a> for a minute, because I don\u2019t think it\u2019s complete bullsh*t. He\u2019s so locked into an extraordinarily successful business relationship with the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is the first time he\u2019s saying, \u2018Actually, for me, this is about the challenge of doing something I\u2019m frightened of. I\u2019m not smiling at the press and doing my routine, I\u2019m doing character work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch, an actor of looming presence, has shared bodies with a sorcerer in Doctor Strange<\/a>, breathed fire into The Hobbit<\/a>\u2019s dragon Smaug and squared up to Andrew Scott\u2019s Moriarty in Sherlock<\/a>. But none of these experiences prepared him for scenes playing opposite a man-sized crow in The Thing With Feathers.<\/p>\n

His unnerving scene partner in the film adaptation of Porter\u2019s book Grief Is the Thing With Feathers \u2013 a project Cumberbatch also executive produced \u2013 was the product of animatronics, the physical performance of the actor Eric Lampaert, the voice of David Thewlis, and much dark plumage.<\/p>\n

Lampaert, inside the bird suit, was brilliant, Cumberbatch says. \u201cFrom a performative point of view, his performance was extraordinary in itself, but it was an amalgamation of five different people\u2019s artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also every bit as terrifying as one could imagine from a 2.5m-tall man-bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cI arrived on set,\u201d Cumberbatch says. \u201cI\u2019d been told about the kind of model he was going to be \u2013 an artist called Nicola Hicks had made this incredible maquette \u2013 but nothing quite prepared me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like some kind of Napoleonic surgery happening on the deck of a ship. There were bits of bird arriving on trees. Eight people building Eric into Crow, which took about an hour every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

What emerged was \u201cuncannily bigger than human, smaller than giant, covered in his body language and behaviours \u2013 and so human. And almost laughably man-in-a-suit. It was comic in another register watching him bump into bits of furniture.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Cumberbatch, the creature\u2019s presence was both inspiring and oppressive. \u201cAt times it was also too much,\u201d he says. \u201cYou never want a ping-pong ball and green screen, but sometimes it has to be part of my imagination. I actually needed it to be less present than it was. It was like acting with someone shining a torch in your face.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Love is great. Then one of you will be dog-tired and doing the bins\u2019: Benedict Cumberbatch on surviving marriageOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Grief Is the Thing With Feathers began as a literary experiment. Porter, then a young bookseller and editor, wrote it as a hybrid of prose, poetry, folktale and meditation on loss inspired by Ted Hughes\u2019s Crow and titled after Emily Dickinson\u2019s poem \u201cHope\u201d Is the Thing With Feathers.<\/p>\n

The book tells of an unnamed father and two sons who are reeling from a mother\u2019s death. They are visited by Crow, a trickster, therapist and outsize babysitter, who declares, \u201cI won\u2019t leave until you don\u2019t need me any more.\u201d <\/p>\n

The unconventional text found a champion at Faber & Faber, which published it in 2015 to ecstatic acclaim. Its originality and emotional impact found an immediate audience. Ten years later, the book has been translated into 36 languages.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Thing With Feathers: Benedict Cumberbatch in Dylan Southern\u2019s film <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d drive yourself mad, wouldn\u2019t you, predicting things,\u201d Porter says. \u201cIn fact, one of the lessons of this book and many others \u2013 just think about Anna Burns\u2019s Milkman<\/a> \u2013 is that publishing continually seems to think it knows the rules, insists on the rules, lives by the rules, and yet those rules are repeatedly, tirelessly broken.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe imitative strategies of publishing seem to be proven wrong every time. When I speak to my mentees I say, \u2018You have to split your mind in half: be utterly naive, follow your convictions, write in a flow state, write only what you can write; and let the other half of you keep a rigorous eye on what\u2019s going on.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you\u2019re not going to have a hit with a book about a kid who goes to wizard school. Somebody has done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch, who has deftly navigated a path between juggernaut Hollywood franchises \u2013 Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Hobbit and Star Trek \u2013 and such auteur-driven indie work as The Imitation Game<\/a>, The Power of the Dog<\/a> and The Electrical Life of Louis Wain<\/a>, nods in agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same algorithm in film-making as well,\u201d the actor says. \u201c\u2018Well, we have a combination of Mary Poppins meets Jaws meets Schindler\u2019s List. And we\u2019ll have a wonderful messy hit.\u2019 It\u2019s an algorithm based on \u2018We know that works.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the minute you fall into that trap, the culture deadens. People sleepwalk into the cinema and leave saying, \u2018Yeah, it was all right.\u2019 But it doesn\u2019t enliven you. It doesn\u2019t provoke new thought or evolution of the form.\u201d<\/p>\n

The children were children. They\u2019re untrained actors. There\u2019s nothing performative about what they gave us. It was like capturing lightning in a jar. All the more authentic, punchy and powerful for it<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Benedict Cumberbatch<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch has long been a fan of Porter\u2019s book. \u201cI loved it,\u201d he says. \u201cI read it shortly after Max had done a reading with my sister-in-law, Megan Hunter, whose book The End We Start From is also something we produced\u201d (as a 2023 film<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Grief Is the Thing With Feathers found a bold new life on stage through Enda Walsh<\/a>\u2019s adaptation, Porter\u2019s regular collaborator Cillian Murphy giving a virtuoso performance<\/a> as both the bereaved father and Crow. First staged in Galway in 2018, the play was nominated for five Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards before transferring to London and New York. <\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I went to see the play,\u201d Cumberbatch says. \u201cI am a huge fan of Cillian Murphy and anything he does with Enda Walsh after their three collaborations.<\/p>\n

\"GriefGrief Is the Thing With Feathers: Cillian Murphy in Enda Walsh\u2019s stage version of Max Porter\u2019s novella. Photograph: Richard Termine\/New York Times <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the chief things that made me go, \u2018Right, that\u2019s the work I want to be doing,\u2019 was watching Cillian Murphy being beaten up \u2013 or pretend to be beaten up \u2013 to the Ramones\u2019 Be My Baby in Disco Pigs. Cillian and Eileen Walsh \u2013 another incredible performer \u2013 just blew my mind. And, f**k me, Cillian\u2019s manifestation of Crow on stage was a great thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a book that was supposedly unpublishable, and later deemed unfilmable, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers has a knack for bucking the odds. Enter Dylan Southern, one of the directors of the well-regarded music documentaries Meet Me in the Bathroom and Shut Up and Play the Hits.<\/p>\n

Southern\u2019s adaptation marshals the original\u2019s formal experiments into three distinct chapters, told from the points of view of the father, his two orphaned boys and Crow. Swerving between horror, drama and dark comedy, the film plays like a home-invasion movie, with Thewlis\u2019s Crow assuming the role of an unwelcome house guest with a menacing line in patter: \u201cGood morning, English widower! Sleep well, did we?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Thing With Feathers: Benedict Cumberbatch in Dylan Southern\u2019s film <\/p>\n

Southern\u2019s film opens with Cumberbatch\u2019s widowed father \u2013 called just Dad in the script \u2013 who is left to raise his young sons after the sudden death of his wife, overwhelmed by his grief and struggling with such basic tasks as making breakfast and washing the dishes.<\/p>\n

His fraught emotional state summons the corvid creature that simultaneously represents his grief, guilt and increasingly fractured psychological state.<\/p>\n

Crow inserts himself in the shadows of the family home, taunting Dad and forcing an emotional reckoning. Ultimately, the visitor helps to reshape the broken family in the wake of death. <\/p>\n

There is a fascinating intersection between Dad\u2019s pretence at normality and a working actor who, like Cumberbatch, has to alternate between Hamlet or Frankenstein\u2019s creature and home life with three children. The son of the veteran actors Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, he has been married to the director Sophie Hunter since 2015. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Benedict Cumberbatch: \u2018It\u2019s really important to understand monsters, in order to stop them\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work allows you to get everything out and leave it on the dance floor,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a gift. People ask, \u2018How do you shift between imagined reality and your own lived experience?\u2019 It\u2019s very easy. When it\u2019s that intense it\u2019s about putting something on and then taking it off. Getting in a car, leaving it behind. Getting back in the car the next morning, putting it back on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a ritual. There was an amazing make-up artist I worked with, Wakana Yoshihara, who created this sort of spa-like calm for me to meditate and listen to music in, to focus through massive grief. Everyone on set was extraordinarily helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Thing With Feathers: Benedict Cumberbatch with the Boxall brothers in Dylan Southern\u2019s film <\/p>\n

The two boys in the film are played by the first-time actors and real-life brothers Richard and Henry Boxall. They required even more careful management than the furniture-bumping Crow. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe children were children,\u201d Cumberbatch says. \u201cThey\u2019re untrained actors. There\u2019s nothing performative about what they gave us. It was like capturing lightning in a jar. All the more authentic, punchy and powerful for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the time of making it, the cost was time, patience, being in several different forms and wearing different hats. There was the producer side going, \u2018Are they okay? What do they need?\u2019 We had the safeguarding aspects of their hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch admits to a conflict. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there was the acting side. I\u2019m opposite two colleagues who have experience here. But then there\u2019s the parent inside of me going, \u2018F**king hell. Film sets are a horrible place for children to be, especially six-year-old boys who just want to run around and fart and play and kick each other.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiles. \u201cThere was a lot going on.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Thing With Feathers: Max Porter. Photograph: Betty Bhandiari\/PA <\/p>\n

The idea of Crow has long since outgrown the book. Porter tells a story about Crow\u2019s migration. \u201cOne of the most beautiful responses I ever got was from a grief counsellor for children who had been working with two young children who lost their parents,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t read them the book; she just introduced them to the idea of Crow and read some passages. And she said it was the first time she reached them. Off they went into the woods, running up and down the trees, screaming, \u2018I\u2019m a crow! I\u2019m a crow!\u2019 <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Eric review: Benedict Cumberbatch shines alongside big fluffy monster in extremely strange abduction dramaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have much in our culture that ritualises death, that allows us to talk about it. The Irish do it better than we do, if you think about John McGahern and those descriptions of the communal attention to ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cumberbatch nods approval in his thoughtful way.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiddle England has a very locked, tight, get-the-f**k-on-with-it kind of language,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard place to exist emotionally. This film, if anything, gives permission to grieve. Permission to go there. It\u2019s all right. It\u2019s part of life. The more we accept that, the better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Thing With Feathers opens in cinemas on Friday, November 21st<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is the evening before the London premiere of the keenly anticipated film The Thing With Feathers. Max…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[521,430,6678,87841,156,87840,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-126325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-benedict-cumberbatch","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-cillian-murphy","11":"tag-enda-walsh","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-max-porter","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}