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.
