Blackbird

I can’t imagine how long it took Scottish playwright David Harrower to find the words that make the dialogue in this play so faultlessly natural and agonisingly harrowing. Nor can I imagine the amount of challenging research, discussion, emotion and pressure that must go into every production of this disturbing, unnerving, sad, yet strangely hopeful, piece of theatre.

In Blackbird, a young woman, Una, confronts the man who abused her when she was twelve years of age. But the play is about more than that. Harrower himself describes it as “a love story about two people who have been through a life-changing event together”.

That “life-changing event” was complex – and is explained in breath-holding dialogue crafted by a playwright whose writing is so exacting that the words themselves define the characters, the pace, the timing … and the tension that is created on the stage.

Tension is integral to this production directed by Pippa Thoroughgood. It’s there in Charlottee De Wit’s body, in her wary eyes. Because Charlotte De Wit is Una – and after 15 years she has traced the man who abused and abandoned her – and whom she idolised.

It’s also there in Phil McGrath who plays that man – Ray. Now 56 years old, Ray has finally established a new life after spending four years in prison for statutory rape of a minor. Una has surprised him at his place of work and he’s edgy, confused, frightened.

The tension these two actors create is palpable. It’s raw and physical. It’s hard to know which one to watch, so intense is the situation, so contained are their words, so confusing are the feelings they reveal.

De Wit and McGrath hold their characters tightly, almost rasping out the short, interrupted sentences that say so much more than the words themselves; words; that take them back 15 years to the lonely child, the kind neighbour, a love that developed but was wrong …

Thoroughgood’s direction keeps the action as confined as the dialogue. It’s taut, agitated, elastic. Constrained in a small, hostile place she keeps the movement tightly controlled, the personal pressure high as the characters confront the implications of a past that is still so real to them.

It is not easy to bare so many emotions on the stage. It’s not easy to watch either. And yet De Wit and McGrath make the situation so compelling that it’s impossible to look away, impossible not to feel for both the characters.

I used the word breath-holding earlier. Is it a word? There were so many moments in this production when I felt myself holding my breath, leaning forward, on edge …

Blackbird looks at a very difficult subject through a variety of different lenses. Harrower did his research well – and contained it all in a 90-minute production that is “theatre that teaches” in the way that only theatre can – live, unfiltered by cameras and distance.

Congratulations to HER, to Pippa Thoroughgood and the two actors who contain themselves so very carefully to present these tormented characters that David Harrower created so carefully – and that they portray so skilfully.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly …

Paul McCartney

Carol Wimmer

Photographer: Ravina Jassani.