Analyze This

David Harrower's Blackbird

by David Anthony Fox

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Nothing is obvious about David Harrower's harrowing play, Blackbird — not even the title. Is it, as I've been told, British slang for a prison inmate? Does it ironically recall Ray Henderson and Mort Dixon's sweet-sad ballad, where "no one here can love and understand me"? Or Paul McCartney's song, where "you were only waiting for this moment to be free"?

You'll have to decide — just as you must painstakingly analyze the true nature of a story that seems clear but is anything but.

Una, a women in her late 20s, arrives unexpected at a grim factory where she confronts Ray, a middle-aged man who molested her nearly two decades before (he was 40 and she was 12). Ray takes her into a dirty lunchroom so they can talk without being overheard. While he defends himself, eager to split hairs if it allows him to hold on to some dignity, the facts aren't in dispute. Ray had sex with Una. He was convicted of the crime, and he served a prison sentence, during which he was regularly tormented.

The first half-hour of Blackbird is heavy going. Harrower's stylized, fragmented language feels stilted. (Director Joe Canuso sets the play in the U.S., but the dialogue works more effectively with British accents, as in the original production.) Una harangues and pins the shocked, defensive Ray into a corner. All signs point to a drably earnest evening of victim-achieves-catharsis theater.

But stick with it, because something clicks. Harrower has the guts to suggest the relationship between Una and Ray is more complex. That there was real intimacy of souls, even (and this will undoubtedly offend some audiences) an erotic charge. In a mesmerizing sequence of monologues recounting sexual consummation, betrayal and — yes — love, we discover that the real story of Blackbird is as messy as the room where it takes place. Yet it's also compelling, even touching.

Canuso's production captures the necessary tension, and Juliana Zinkel (Una) and Pearce Bunting (Ray) give distinguished performances. I ought to say that Blackbird is for adults, and some will find the content disturbing. I should definitely add that Harrower is a major young playwright whose work should be seen by those interested in serious theater.

(d_fox@citypaper.net)

Blackbird | Through March 1, $25-$30, Theatre Exile at Plays and Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., 215-218-4022, theatreexile.org