The Pigeon Whispers

Smart and accomplished, it is customary for psychoanalyst, Dr Faye Monroe, to control the dialogue, ask the questions, tease answers. When she encounters a new client, the erudite Oliver Blake, the nature of engagement tilts, and with it the axis of Faye's constructed world. A cerebral dance commences. Choreographed with hints of a 'danse macabre', it evolves to fencing, bouts of cognitive and psychological combat. What does he actually want? Who is his wife? And where is she?

Against a classical score, we roam and ricochet philosophy, art, Schopenhauer and the childless choice, Greek myths, scatology and sarcophagi, and in India, the delicate and rich art of passementerie, its elaborate braids, embellishments and stitching… As well as the more mundane – college friends, old flames, excruciating family – the contrast of life's messy minutiae.

In its Arabic origins, the word of the pigeon whisperer is deemed untrustworthy, dismissed as hearsay from court, tainted and taboo. As our perspectives shift and swivel, fault lines are traced, addictions viscerally fed, and as cracks and flaws are revealed, we ask, whose whispers, whose words, do we believe?