Blackbird: painful to watch, impossible to ignore
Not long after the Dunblane shooting (where a man entered an elementary school in a small Scottish town and shot and killed a teacher and 15 kindergarten children), Martin Amis was interviewed on Michael Ignatieff’s talk show in England. Amis observed that immediately following the events, people said there are no words to describe such a tragedy.
Yet eventually, he noted, you must search for those words. And if you’re a writer, it’s your job.
In his play, *Blackbird*, David Harrower gives words to a painful and horrifying relationship 15 years after it has ended. In this "Theatre Conspiracy":http://www.conspiracy.ca/ / "Rumble Productions":http://rumble.org/ co-production, time and distance has not given Una (Jennifer Mawhinney) or Ray (Russell Roberts), clarity, and certainly not closure. So with the audience as witness, they unravel what’s left of their lives.
Una arrives at Ray’s work, where he now goes by the name Peter. He hustles her into the debris strewn staff lounge, where they spend the entire play wading through the garbage of their own lives, having begun their relationship when Una was 12 and Ray was 40.
The very fact that the relationship being dissected is one that begins and ends with pedophilia, is the most disturbing aspect of Harrower’s play. He purposely makes his characters inarticulate as they struggle with understanding, unable to express the sordidness of their experience with beautiful language.
Una has tracked Ray down, having seen his picture in a trade magazine and recognizing him in spite of his changed name. We are never clear what his job is, as he may not be truthful about anything. But he appears to have “made something of himself”, having found his way to middle management after serving jail time for being with Una. He says he’s in a relationship with a woman who knows what he’s done, and that she is one year older than him. He says he’s lucky.
Una and Ray met at her parents’ barbeque, where Ray says he innocently talked to her because she was lonely; her friend had run off after a falling out. As Ray describes the day he defends himself as someone not looking for trouble, he had a girlfriend and a job, and he’d just moved to the neighbourhood; everything about him was normal.
Una tells him, “my parents thought you were a loner.” It’s a chilling moment, because Una is recounting her own clue that Ray wasn’t right, and throws it at him like she’s still a child, and because he had sex with her when she was 12, part of her still is.
Mawhinney and Roberts perform with deft rawness. Under Armour’s direction they take. Una and Ray through a journey of painful intimacy. The production is happening at the East Cultch’s new "Culture Lab":http://www.thecultch.com/ and brings to mind a class room, which reflects the distasteful nature of Ray and Una’s relationship well. It is painful to watch, and impossible to ignore. Roberts’ Ray has ticks and sunken nervousness around Una that reflect his guilt but also his confusion around people, giving us a glimpse of someone who has made his desire for a child justifiable to himself, while knowing how to act in a world that finds no justice for it. Mawhinney gets to the bones of Una’s damage, where as a child her sexually charged precociousness left her vulnerable to a damage she still can’t escape.
This is a gripping production of a disturbing play. On the night I went to see it, it took a while for the audience to get that it was over, like we were just smacked in the face. As we stumbled out I noted that no one was talking yet, as we all had to catch our breath.
_A Theatre Conspiracy / Rumble Productions Co-production; Written by David Harrower; Directed by Norman Armour; Featuring Jennifer Mawhinney and Russell Roberts; Stage management: Joanne PB Smith; Lighting design: John Webber; Costume design: Barbara Clayden; Sound design: Candelario Andrade; Set design: Barbara Clayden and John Webber; Assistant director: Camille Gingras. It runs until March 29 for more information go_ "here":www.thecultch.com