Blackbird
Photo: Dahlia Katz
Talk Is Free Theatre/ Blackbird by David Harrower, directed by Dean Deffett, Hope United Church, 2550 Danforth Ave., closes Oct. 18.
Scottish playwright David Harrower has the most perfect name because his controversial 2005 play Blackbird continues to have a harrowing effect on audiences. This is my fourth go round with Blackbird and each iteration has been more troubling than the last.
The premise is charged with minefields.
Una (Kirstyn Russelle) has tracked down the man she used to know as Ray at his workplace (Cyrus Lane), and with whom she had a sexual relationship 15 years earlier when she was 12. That man now known as Peter has gone on to make a new life for himself after serving half his six-year prison sentence.
The setting is a windowless employee staff room that has not been cleaned and is filled with detritus such as empty sandwich bags, coffee cups, and candy wrappers.
Talk Is Free Theatre’s artistic director, Arcady Spivak loves mounting plays in unconventional spaces.
This time he has chosen one of the rabbit warrens of rooms in the church hall at Hope United, and after fitting in a table and six chairs for the supposed staff and about 19 chairs for the audience, that leaves a sliver of playing space for the actors.
That means the claustrophobic atmosphere walling in the encounter between Una and Ray is writ large and the audience feels every visceral moment of it. Kudos to director Dean Deffett for cleverly manoeuvring his actors through this narrow battlefield as Una and Ray engage in their power struggle.
For a battlefield it surely is as who holds the power keeps shifting as the memory of past events unfolds in real time during the agonizing 90 minutes of the play. And of course, as someone so famously said, recollections may vary.
Harrower’s writing is raw and fragmented, and the rhythm disjointed. The conversation between Una and Ray is coming from deep within and filled with passion. When the actors are this close to the audience any false emotion on their part would be instantly clocked which is why I can categorically state that both the performances of Lane and Russelle are frighteningly realistic. In this production, these two actors are at the top of their game.
In the woke era we live in now, having any sympathy for Ray is unimaginable but the playwright, it seems, deliberately wrote ambiguities into Blackbird that prevent doctrinaire decision-making on the part of the audience. This time I found the character ambiguities even worse to contend with.
Is Ray just an ordinary middle-aged man who was caught up in the provocatively seductive world of a sexually aggressive 12-year-old?
Is Una an innocently romantic child who was cunningly and carefully groomed to fit the dreams of her fantasy world?
Blackbird
Photo: Dahlia Katz
This production of Blackbird is so cleverly staged and so very well acted that both scenarios could easily be true, and I kept changing my mind throughout the play as events unfolded.
We are forced to remember that we are looking at the real long-term psychological trauma done to Una, but we are also looking at emotional damage and vulnerability in the man as well.
And therein lies the grave problem that this production of Blackbirdcaptures so very well – the moral ambiguity that is presented by both characters.
Perhaps the worst thing to emerge from Blackbird is to call it a love story, and in fact playwright Harrower has actually acknowledged the play as a “queasy love story” and that is not what we want to hear and what the courts would absolutely consider a clear case of child abuse.
The very first time I saw the play I instantly thought of the song from the 1920s, “Bye-Bye Blackbird” and the lyrics. “No one here can love or understand me” which can apply to both Una and Ray.
The blackbird itself has long being associated as a symbol of difficulty and suffering and also, as an omen. Is Una’s coming an omen of bad things to come for Ray and his new life because the lack of a definite ending is just another one of Blackbird’s ambiguities.
If you’re willing to see a play that will give you no moral comfort but will distress you, possibly infuriate you, but definitely intrigue you, then this production is a must see.
And a final note about Arcady Spivak. I have now seen several Talk Is Free Theatre productions, and I am continually impressed by the casting. In fact, Spivak has one of the best casting noses in the business because once I’ve seen his productions, it’s hard to imagine any other actors playing the roles.
And a final note about Talk Is Free Theatre. The Toronto seasons of the Barrie-based company and its well-produced plays, whether substantive or comedic, are a welcome addition to the Big Smoke.