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.