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Blackbird
UK Tour
As testified by the sound of seats flipping to the upright position during the opening-night performance in Glasgow, Blackbird isn't for everyone.
Those who favour knee-jerk reactions to considered responses may object to the questions that David Harrower's play, which premiered in 2005 at Edinburgh International Festival, asks them to consider.
"Dawn Steele
captures the brittle
determination of
a complex and
unknowable
character"
Tricky questions, concerning the possibility of genuine romantic love between a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl, the conflict between a perceived greater good and the desires of a child who doesn't feel like a victim, and the definitions of abuse and consent.
The play, more or less a two-hander, sees twentysomething Una reunited with fiftysomething Ray, who now goes by Peter and has a life quite different to that which he left behind when he began a six-year prison sentence.
Neither character knows the full story of what happened on the night, some 15 years earlier, when they last saw each other in the flesh. During a reunion at Peter's workplace, which he was not expecting, each fills in the blanks for the other.
If Ray and Una have a lot to take in then the audience has even more, including how the pair first met, how their relationship unfolded, and how things played out in court. The details are provided at such a fast rate that there's barely time to consider the implications of any one life-changing decision or retrospective justification.
Robert Daws gives a very convincing performance as Ray/Peter, who finds his carefully constructed new life under threat when Una tracks him down. He's had plenty of time to mull over what happened and what it means about his own psychology, but his well-rehearsed explanations nonetheless sound like a broken man shouting into the wind.
They certainly don't mean much to Una, who hasn't come to hear that their relationship was a mistake. Dawn Steele captures the brittle determination of this complex and unknowable character, who unlike Ray has been unable to forge a new identity or move on.
Perhaps her most thought-provoking speech concerns how she was treated immediately after the police became involved. Although she doesn't shy away from using coarse language to describe her relationship with Ray, the one time she talks in the kind of language associated with sexual abuse is when detailing what happened after he had gone, when she refused to consent to the physical examination that was to secure his conviction.
This troubling account combined with Ray's subsequent behaviour (and his insistence, however feebly expressed, that he posed no threat to other children), provides the play's knotty central question.
There are no easy answers, but it's a positive step that it can be asked in a play that's on such an extensive tour of the UK. Even if some of those buying tickets don't want to hear it.
Shona Craven
Until June 14 2008 at Theatre Royal, Glasgow. Tel: 0870 060 6647.
www.theambassadors.com
Have you seen this production? Share your views!
What the papers said:
The Guardian:
*** "Although at first I found Dawn Steele's Una a touch shrill... her admission of her unsatisfied need for her former lover leaves one deeply moved"
The Herald:
**** "There are still moments that shock...[an] understated but still devastating work"
The Scotsman:
**** "In this superb, no-frills touring production...
Dawn Steele gives the performance of her life"
Metro:
**** "Blackbird retains its facility for heated post-show debate"
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