Susan Granger’s review of “Blackbird” (Belasco Theater – March, 2016)
It’s challenging, shocking, and profoundly disturbing – this play about pedophilia.
The harrowing drama ignites immediately, as a twitchy, twentysomething woman, Una (Michelle Williams), corners cowering, contrite, middle-aged Ray (Jeff Daniels) at the end of the day in a medical supply company’s bleak lunch room that’s strewn with debris.
Apparently, when Una was a nubile 12-year old and Ray was 40, he had ‘consensual’ sex with her and, subsequently, served time in prison. Now he’s got a new name and a new life in another town. All that’s in jeopardy when obviously agitated Una shows up unexpectedly to confront him.
In a compelling performance, wispy Michelle Williams evokes Una’s bare-legged, childlike demeanor, aided immensely by costumer Ann Roth’s short, flowery frock and heels. Nevertheless, her tremulously controlling tone is deliberate, even vicious, as she recounts exactly what happened that fateful night, as if she’d been rehearsing this encounter for the past 15 years.
Jeff Daniels, who played this same part Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2007, is now even older; his hulking physique belies Ray’s festering guilt and vulnerability as he begs and bargains with her, realizing that there is still an ambiguous, unbreakable bond between them.
Scottish playwright David Harrower won London’s prestigious Olivier Award – and it’s obvious why. Not since Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and Paul Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” has this guarded subject been as provocatively explored, particularly since Harrower raises more questions than he ever attempts to answer.
Director Joe Mantello deftly utilizes Scott Pask’s stark set under Brian MacDevitt’s brutal fluorescent lighting for their grim, emotionally-charged reckoning.
This taut, 80-minute revelation is performed without an intermission – and late-comers are not seated after the curtain rises.
FYI: David Harrower has adapted his play for the screen, and it will premiere later this year, directed by Benedict Andrews, starring Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn.