To See or Not to See: Blackbird

The hysterical and piercing cry of Una (Michelle Williams) echoes throughout the theater. We have just witnessed a piece of the complicated and murky relationship between Una and Ray (Jeff Daniels). It is one that is shared through intimate memories and is not easily forgotten.

David Harrower‘s Olivier-award winning play is a doozy. We meet Una, a woman in her late-20s, surprising Ray, a man somewhere in his 50s, at his office. It is not a pleasant surprise. Ray is extremely jumpy and upset that Una has found him; he’s living in a new town with a new name (“Peter”). It turns out that fifteen years before, Una and Ray had been lovers. Yes, you read that right. Fifteen years before. Una had been twelve, and Ray had been around forty. The next hour or so that follows this revelation is intense. Their love story–because it is an extremely twisted love story–and it’s aftermath haunt both of them in ways that emerge by the play’s harrowing conclusion.

A topic as uncomfortable as sexual abuse of a minor is not an easy one for a production team to tackle. Joe Mantello directs Blackbird by allowing his actors to take center stage. Michelle Williams certainly looks like a young, fragile thing. It is easy to imagine her as a young girl, coltish and yearning to be an adult. Her Una is balancing on the edge of a nervous breakdown, though, throughout the whole show. Her stuttering and pitch of voice sometimes distract from the fact that although the years have physically passed by, Una has emotionally stayed a young, confused, hurt girl. As Ray, Jeff Daniels excels at keeping the audience guessing as to the true nature of Ray. He’s always been average–even now, he’s another office drone–but with Una, he became more. Did Ray really love Una? Or did he really have a fetish for young girls? The audience is never quite sure–which is a testament to Daniels’s plaintive performance.

After the actors have reached their emotional brink and the story is all laid bare, the audience is, simply, left reeling and exhausted. The morally ambiguous situation we were presented does not neatly get explained away. In fact, Blackbird will linger in your mind long after the curtain closes.

Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe