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Black Hole Where the Soul Vanishes: April 10 -20, 2025 extended April 24, 25, 26 (Thurs.-Fri.-Sat.
at 7:30)
David Harrower is a Scottish playwright whose controversial Olivier Award winning third play “Blackbird” was first produced in New York by the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2007. It was originally commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005 where it premiered directed by the renowned German director Peter Stein to great acclaim. The present production in the intimate space of Studio 17 is a riveting tour de force for two actors plus one who makes a cameo appearance towards the end of the play. The play deals with the taboo love affair between Una, a girl of twelve and Ray, a mature man of forty—the play’s action takes place fifteen years after the fact when Una, now a woman in her late 20s has come to confront the man, now in his late 50s, for the first time since their affair blew up their lives and left their identities in tatters. Both had suffered the consequences of forbidden love, the man was convicted to six years in prison, after which he created a new identity for himself in a different place to continue life, while the girl/woman, ostracized by her family and her home town, has been unable to reconcile her emotions about her past experience and cannot find peace. The encounter is a descent into the purgatory of truth seeking. The title “Blackbird” aroused my curiosity. David Harrower had been asked about it also but never offered an answer. However, in my search I came across an interesting connection. In 1968 Paul McCartney and John Lennon penned one of their most successful songs, “Blackbird” whose lyrics are a haunting echo for Una’s tragedy and are worth quoting here: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night/ Take these broken wings and learn to fly/ All your life/ You were only waiting for this moment to arise/ Take these sunken eyes and learn to see/ All your life/ You were only waiting for this moment to be free/ Blackbird, fly/Into the light of the dark black night. “ David Harrower is looking at the broken “wings” of Una but also at the “sunken eyes” of Ray/Peter, as he puts them through the agonizing recapturing of their diverging memories of what happened in that “dark black night”, provoked by the sudden appearance of Una in Ray/Peter’s present life. The play has no resolution for the two except perhaps a deeper understanding how and why each is beyond repair. Thus the play forces the audience to confront the subject of burgeoning erotic emotions in pubescent girl and the overpowering sexual attraction and subsequent abuse by middle-aged men—it is a subject that has been sensationalized, trivialized, largely seen one-dimensionally and, of course, is treated as a matter of law. The production in Studio 17 is holding a literally intimate social mirror up to the nature of this taboo subject. The small spare space under cold white light (lighting designer Aiden Bezark) with only the sparse furniture of an office (set designer Jessie Marie Butler), such as metal lockers, plastic chairs, a table, and the detritus of snack foods, pretty much according to the playwright’s direction, provides the actors plenty of space for distancing as well as close combative encounters. Suzanne Didonna’s tightly controlled direction takes full advantage of the cold messy ambience and the sound of metal banging, all of which enables the actors to play their explosive moments to the fullest while maintaining the complex jazzy rhythms of the dialogue—at times both characters spray each other with words like shrapnel, simultaneously shooting accusations and interweaving their sentence fragments. The two actors work with incredible precision through the relentless ninety minutes of agony sprinkled with brief respites of exhaustion. Emilie Rose Bak, a Danish-American actress, plays Una with many colors shifting with ease from aggression to pseudo-seduction, to emotional vulnerability, to matter-of-fact argument. Scott McCord as Ray/Peter is an actor partner of equal strength, as he attempts to distance himself from the resurrected past of Ray, trying to explain away his “mistake”, and emphasizing his subsequent debt of punishment in jail; as if he is the victim of his uncontrolled desire, he tries to put his own spin on the story. Both demonstrate ultimately, that the facts of the event are less important than the emotional/psychological sources of the love affair: Una’s innocent first stirrings of erotic love and Ray’s sexual desire with the ultimate destructive consequences. David Harrower does not pose this unequal sexual encounter through the “male gaze”, he gives equal currency to the reality of a young girl’s physiological awakening of her own confusing/confused erotic sensations. Una is no Lolita, yet Ray/Peter’s demon lies deep within himself, as we find out towards the end, when a nameless Girl suddenly appears at the door. Samantha Biton plays this cameo role with all the authentic lovely innocence required—eager, afraid, confused by what she encounters in Peter’s office. This particular production of a difficult play by one of the most renowned present British playwrights demonstrates that the best theater in New York can often be found in hidden spaces, up (or down) some dark flights of stairs, accomplished by a New York specialty—theater artists dedicated to their art often for no (or very little) other reward than doing important work superbly for an appreciative audience that finds those spaces and climbs those stairs to see, hear, feel and think. |
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