Photo – Brett Boardman
Another feather in the cap for playwright, Nick Coyle, The Feather In The Web flaps, floats and flies around the turbulent and treacherous cross currents of obsession and unrequited love.
The feather has fallen from Cupid’s wing, or from the arrow from Cupid’s bow, the projectile’s point having found its target in Kimberly, a woman with no filter, unfettered by social convention and polite conversation.
As one character calls her, “Legitimately off the chain”, Kimberly walks out on her mother’s cancer chemo, terrorises a family who picks her up hitching, and jerks off a make-up counter guy publicly in a Mall. She needs therapy and seeks it, but psyches the psychiatrist out with a premature evacuation from the consultation.
Then she claps eyes on Miles, thunderbolt and lightning, instant infatuation very, very frightening. No matter that they meet at Miles’ engagement party, Kimberly is utterly besotted, totally entangled. Coyle makes fixation fascinating, weaving a wickedly funny web of unbridled surrender and spinning it with the darker side of unmitigated manipulation.
Claire Lovering is kinetic as Kimberly, a coiled spring of fevered, manic daredevil, ready to dare anything as she gallops uncontrollably through an unattainable fantasy. Gareth Davies as Miles plays it with a bemused attachment, sorely tempted to take extreme advantage of Kimberly's subjugation. Michelle Lim Davidson as Miles fiancée, Lily is delightful, with an infused daffiness laced with ineffable poignancy. And in a myriad of roles, from fresh and blood matriarch to phantasmagorical Aura, Tina Bursill takes the polenta. Her take on Jennifer, the improve guru, is priceless.
Sophie Fletcher’s design literally peels away, with each scene change, shedding layers and creating reveals just like the narrative.
The title of the play comes from a line of Kimberly's dialogue: I think I’m like a spider because I have pre-programmed abilities, but generally, I’m not very creative. And once I’ve made my web I have to wait there. Forever. Even if it’s in the wrong place. Even if I’m starving to death. And then one day I feel..something struggling, something caught... a fly. It’s you. But it’s not a fly. It’s a feather. It’s you.
Imaginatively directed by Ben Winspear, The Feather In The Web tickles while tangling you in a magnificent obsession.
Griffin Theatre Company presents
The Feather in the Web
by Nick Coyle
Director Ben Winspear
Venue: SBW Stables Theatre | 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross, NSW
Dates: 13 October – 17 November 2018
Tickets: $60 – $38
Bookings: 02 9361 3817 | griffintheatre.com.au
