In 'Blackbird,' the wreckage of childhood abuse, laid out on the table

Review: In ‘Blackbird,’ the wreckage of childhood abuse, laid out on the table

By Philip Brandes

Sept. 8, 2017 6:45 AM PT

There are no easy outs in the Grove Theater Center revival of David Harrower’s “Blackbird” — not for its two characters locked in brutal psychological warfare, nor for anyone in the audience wishing for a moral framework that makes sense of their tortured relationship.

That’s because Harrower’s unsettling 2007 drama artfully peels the labels faster than we can apply them to the tense reunion between a man and woman whose past sexual encounter occurred when she was 12 and he was 40.

Fifteen years later, Una (Candace Hammer) has tracked down Ray (Eric Larson) to the dingy lunchroom of the faceless company where he works. But are we watching a confrontation between victim and predator? Avenger and penitent? Or star-crossed lovers? Una and Ray don’t seem sure themselves as they ricochet between conflicted emotions.

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After serving his prison sentence, Ray has managed to reboot his life with a new identity, a low-level management job, and a fulfilling marriage (he claims) to an age-appropriate woman. Yet he doth protest too much that his attraction to Una was a one-time aberration — that he’s “not like that” — a rationalization that flies in the face of the statistically high recidivism among sex offenders. As circumstances come to light that seem to undermine his claims of rehabilitation, his piled-on excuses sound even more desperate.

For her part, Una’s initial self-assured composure gives way to anguish, rage and other emotions — some shocking — that expose the complicity beneath their respective self-deceptions.

Both actors convincingly evoke the psychological scars and tormented legacy of their characters’ past. Less believable, though, is what’s taking place between them in the present. Jeremy Adrianne Lelliott’s staging is particularly problematic in the first half, as Ray and Una warily circle each other. Harrower’s intentionally choppy, overlapping dialogue recalls the styles of Harold Pinter and David Mamet in its incomplete sentences, trailing thoughts, pauses and non-sequiturs. However, the pacing still needs to reflect an attempted conversation between two people fumbling for the right words to say, not just reciting lines at each other.

The chemistry and intensity build as their encounter becomes more visceral, but further fine-tuning would help to achieve the full impact of this profoundly disturbing play.

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