Blackbird

Synopsis

Fifteen years ago Ray and Una had an affair. After its disastrous ending, Ray went away and tried to forget, hoping that he'd never be found. But Una has thought of nothing else. Tracking him down and arriving unannounced at his place of work, she forces him finally to confront his actions. Back when he was 40 and she was 12. This highly provocative and tragic love story takes us into dark and difficult waters. Preconceptions will be challenged and difficult questions asked. When does love become abuse? When does wrong become right? And can we ever really escape the shackles of the past?

Our Review:

1 April 2008

It was always hard to sit through and it hasn’t got any easier. David Harrower’s Blackbird, a dance of death to the music of love, sexual abuse and betrayal, was a sensation at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005 and played a season in the West End a few months later.

A new touring production, as directed by David Grindley and designed by Jonathan Fensom, may be less spectacular than Peter Stein’s original version but, judging by the stunned reaction of the Kingston audience, is no less powerful. Whereas Roger Allam and Jodhi May unleashed a primal, bestial rage in the play, Grindley’s pairing of Robert Daws and Dawn Steele is more “average.”

By this I do not mean that Daws as middle-aged Ray and Steele as 27-year-old Una – and it is freshly important, I think, that Una is unequivocally Scottish this time round -- give lesser performances. They just seem more in scale with our own humanity and emotionalism, which makes their characters’ history ...

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