Intense and unabashedly provocative, Friday’s “The Thing with Feathers,” a very theatrical English drama, demands that Benedict Cumberbatch aim for the stars to play a recent grieving widower.

The title refers to black crows. There’s the life-size bird that menacingly smashes into a rain-soaked window and a 6-foot version that appears indoors to taunt this graphic artist as he works.

For Cumberbatch, 49, “Thing” was a deep dive into nearly unhinged sorrow. His widower simply can’t cope with his two young sons or his grief.

It was, he said in a Zoom interview, scary — and irresistible.

“Scary is attractive in our profession. Because if you’ve been as lucky as I have been” — he has 2 Emmys, 2 Oscar nominations, a BAFTA and an Olivier Award — “to find something challenging is interesting.

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