RECOMMENDED
Because we’re so used to the elaborate artifice of theater—the way the stage alters the flow of time and transports us to imaginary worlds—there’s something mind-bending about a drama that occurs not only in real time but in real space.
That’s what the inventive New Theatre Project has done with Scottish playwright David Harrower’s 2005 one-act, two-hand (plus a cameo) work “Blackbird.” Well-cast and tautly directed by Spencer Huffman, this intense and edgy play, which takes place within a factory’s employee break room, is here presented in the actual break room of the Servi-Sure titanium parts factory on the North Side. (It’s the same venue that housed the company’s first two productions, Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and Caryl Churchill’s “Far Away.”) In this hyperreal setting, the action loses the detached, make-believe quality that usually serves to insulate the audience from disturbing content. Instead, it’s as though we’re eavesdropping on something painfully raw and personal. And while the play itself, which is loosely based on a true story, is austere and tightly circumscribed, the production achieves a powerful directness that sets it apart.
“Blackbird”—the enigmatic title may refer to the familiar Beatles song about a bird “singing in the dead of night” who is asked to “take these broken wings and learn to fly”—concerns the meeting, many years after the event, of tried-and-convicted sex offender Ray, who now goes by the name Peter, and his victim Una, who was a shocking twelve years of age at the time and is now in her late twenties. After spotting Ray’s face in a magazine photo, Una has tracked down her much-older abuser, now in his fifties, to his messy workplace, where the two face off about what happened all those years ago, and what impact that brief, illicit encounter has had on their lives since.
Just this bare-bones summary of the work’s premise is sure to drive away some potential playgoers. And indeed, the play is an uncomfortable evening of theater, unrelentingly dark and downbeat, featuring two characters bound together by scarring memories of violation, betrayal, abandonment and shame. Prospective viewers must come to their own conclusions about whether “Blackbird” is a blackness worth exploring. For me, the daring openness and sheer strength of the acting on view here make up for both the play’s fundamental bleakness and the script’s limitations, especially its unwillingness to fully flesh out and contextualize the characters.
Olivia Lindsay and Todd Wojcik are talented, thoughtful actors who are well-matched as Una and Ray. Lindsay exudes a barely contained rage and need that contrast sharply with Wojcik’s stolid defensiveness and reluctance to engage with this figure out of his ugly past, who threatens to unravel the precarious new life he has managed to make for himself. Their performances are supported by director Huffman’s energized direction, whereby the extreme tension between the characters plays out not only verbally, but also in the way they circle around each other warily, in a dance of distrust mingled with the desire to express things long left unsaid.
Unusually for a realistic drama, the play doesn’t seem to be set anywhere in particular—it’s just a generic industrial space somewhere in the English-speaking world. Similarly, the parts as written have a touch of the generic about them, never quite emerging from the basic plot scenario—i.e., victim meets aggressor—into a richer individuality. Una perhaps comes closest, describing herself post-trial as a “ghost” in her scandalized hometown. (George Hudson’s accompanying photography exhibit, titled “Ghosts,” expands upon this characterization.)
However, it isn’t clear what the two characters learn about themselves or the world from their ordeal. It’s not that the script is simplistic—Ray, who has acted monstrously, isn’t a stereotypical monster, and the conflicted and precocious Una isn’t a classic victim—but the playwright refuses to convey a point of view about the explosive issues of sex and power addressed here. Some points are brought home, such as the vast gap between judicial process and personal resolution and closure. But other issues posed by a crime-and-punishment story like this one—such as the limits of forgivability and whether a profoundly disrupted life can get back on track—aren’t delved into, giving the show an ambiguous aftertaste.
The play’s lack of an obvious moral or message seems to be a deliberate choice on the part of the writer. In retrospect, it may well be the right one. Life itself lacks clear answers and neat endings, and the play’s open-endedness forces us to examine our own responses, sympathies and interpretations. “Blackbird” isn’t intended to be a polished, pleasing, comfortingly philosophical work of theater. It’s a pared-down, ultra-focused dissection of a depraved act that is also the two characters’ moment of truth. The New Theatre Project’s grimly honest environmental production succeeds in pulling us into that anguished moment of utter aloneness, to memorable effect.
New Theatre Project’s “Blackbird” runs through November 23 at Servi-Sure, 2020 West Rascher. Tickets are by voluntary donation. For reservations and additional information, visit thenewtheatreproject.com.
