Blackbird

 

Blackbird
Holden St Theatres
Wed 4 April 2024

A conversation with someone who sexually abused you when you were 12 years old is never going to be easy. Blackbird is a tense exploration of a past relationship between 40 year old Ray, and a 12 year old girl, Una.

Una is now 27 and she drops in unannounced on her abuser at his workplace. He’s shocked. And angry. Initially he just wants her out of there. But she will not go quietly. She is also sitting on a volcano of anger and frustration.

It’s not quite clear why she goes back there. She wants to know the truth certainly. She wants him to feel her pain. And slowly he starts to listen. Together they relive happy and traumatic events. There’s still a spark of some fatal attraction that neither of them quite know what to do with.

Was this just a case of sexual abuse or was there some real affection between them back then? Can they resolve the lingering feelings of guilt that apparently haunt them both?

Blackbird is not always easy to watch.  Dialogue frequently spirals into angry shouting matches that display raw emotion stronger than any words can express. You want them to resolve things – they do seem to care about each other deep down under the toxic mess that their relationship created.

This is not your typical presentation of a dominant older male screwing with the life of a young girl. It does appear to be more nuanced than that.  And we’re kept guessing till its surprising conclusion.

Marc Clement and Monika Lapka do a really good job of balancing Ray and Una’s fear and hatred of each other with their apparent desire to reconcile. Apparent because nothing in Blackbird is quite what it seems. The two major roles are quite demanding, and require moving along an emotional spectrum that is extreme, potentially violent, potentially loving, and then trying to make it all seem credible. In this they largely succeed.

What is abundantly clear is that relationships based on uneven power relationships have dire, long term consequences. This brave production deserves a wide audience.

Presented by Solus Productions
Directed by Tony Knight

This review also published on The Clothesline.

 

 

The Children - State Theatre Company - Review

 FEB 9 2024

In 2011 a nuclear power plant in Fukushima caused a radiation scare when its reactors were destroyed as a result of an earthquake and subsequent tsunami. British playwright Lucy Kirkwood has created a similar scenario in a small English town for her 2016 play, The Children.

Despite the background drama The Children gets off to a very low-key start with a commanding looking Tina Bursill standing in a kitchen that is obviously not her own. She plays the part of Rose, and she has let herself into the house of old acquaintances, Hazel (Genevieve Mooy) and Rob (Terence Crawford).

Things are a little tetchy between Hazel and Rose – they are clearly not great friends. When Rob appears a little later we find out why. On the surface The Children just seems to be about renewing social connections after decades apart. Sure there is talk of ‘an exclusion zone’, contaminated water, and intermittent power supply but these aspects of life are just woven into everyday conversations with little drama. It almost seems that life is pretty much normal. Perhaps the point here is the frog in boiling water principle: that people can get used to anything.

In any event Rose has returned with a grander plan. She is looking for older recruits to shoulder more responsibility and enable younger people to leave the area for a chance at a longer, healthier life away from a nuclear contaminated region.

This implausible course of action only has value if seen as allegorical. It would seem that Kirkwood is suggesting that it is incumbent upon older generations who have overseen the gradual destruction of much of the natural world to make amends before they exit the planet. They have a moral responsibility to bear the brunt of the damage and put themselves on the front line of the battle. Rose and Rob seem willing, but Hazel’s not so sure: “I come from a line of long-living women!”

The Children is effortlessly played by three veterans of stage and film, and as expected all three are totally convincing in their respective roles. Dialogue is crisp and witty, and dance and yoga scenes towards the end add visual clues about the complexity of their relationships.

The Children is an intriguing night out. It’s entertaining, and poses big questions without being didactic or too depressing. Quite charming really.