Review: David Harrower's Olivier-Winning BLACKBIRD Challenges Society's Attitude On A Discomforting Subject

Given the subject matter, and the overall tone of Scottish playwright David Harrower's Olivier Award-winning drama, Blackbird, it seems inappropriate, and perhaps disrespectful, to praise the play and director Joe Mantello's production with the usually enthusiastic accolades a reviewer would bestow upon such an expertly achieved eighty minutes of theatre.

How do you describe admiration for a display of such sad and stark emotional vulnerability without it feeling like objectification of the fictional characters who have gone through the experience, and those who are confronted by similar ones in real life?

Slang uses for the title word include describing someone who has been jailed and someone who leaves a person or situation without saying goodbye. Both seem appropriate in this case.

Mantello previously helmed a 2007 Off-Broadway Manhattan Theater Club production of Blackbird, and the Broadway debut retains the male member of his cast, Jeff Daniels, and set designer Scott Pask.

It's sometime after normal work hours at the medical supplies company where Ray (Daniels) is a manager. As the play begins, he's rushing Una (Michelle Williams) into the lunch room before any of the stragglers still working can see her.

They haven't seen each other in fifteen years, since she was twelve and he was in he was 40, and wouldn't be face to face now if Una hadn't seen his photo in a trade magazine at her doctor's waiting room. After serving time in jail for the "three month stupid mistake" made when they were neighbors, Ray has changed his name to Peter and has created a new life for himself.

While many would object to using the word "sex" to describe what they were doing, preferring words like "rape" and "assault," that's the word they use. And this is where taking in Blackbird becomes a dicey experience.

At first it seems like Una is there just to enjoy watching Ray suffer, taking her sweet time to get reacquainted as he attempts to just find out what she wants and get her out of there. But as we learn more about their past together, we also see them reveal emotional places that would question society's cut and dry designation of them as predator and victim.

If you're fortunate enough, as this reviewer is, to have no first-hand experience with such a situation, you could find yourself wishing for a trained professional to cut in on their conversation when Una expresses what she thinks is the cause of her emotional damage, or when Ray speaks of his feeling towards her.

To the playwright's credit, he's not advocating their words and actions, but their unfiltered expression of raw emotions is convincingly conveyed as what they believe, and to watch their encounter go unchallenged can be, as well-executed theatre sometimes is, extremely discomforting.

In varying degrees, Williams and Daniels, both excellent, effectively confront the audience to feel sympathy for their characters as it becomes increasingly clear what emotions are for each other. On top of that, you can admire the actors for just the taking on the responsibility of using their craft to take them "there" eight times a week.