As you enter the auditorium of the quite beautiful Belasco Theatre, Scott Pask’s utterly realistic office set sucks the breath from you. It is terminally blank, grey - a complete evocation of every plain working office. Sterile offices, a sense of uncleanliness which drifts through the air toward you, the energy is dull and unsatisfactory. This is not a place anyone would want to spend time in unless it was absolutely necessary. It is both repellant and depressingly familiar. Almost everyone has worked in such a place, a place where the grime in the carpet would blacken the sole of your bare foot.
Fitz Patton’s sound design signals the commencement of the action. A low grumbling rumble swells, grabbing attention. The centre office on the stage starts to revolve, to reveal a common room, where the detritus of a dinner for a large number (a dinner of snack foods or take-away meals it seems) decorates the sad room, adding to the sense of institutional neglect and collective shame.
Two people are striding down the corridor. He is tall, brutish looking, apparently furious. She is smaller, bird-like in appearance and gait. She seems to be stumbling to keep up; he has her gripped firmly. She wears a bright red coat, bringing the only real colour into this incessantly plain environment.
At first, it looks like she has committed some crime or indiscretion. He seems to be incandescent about whatever it is. She seems both uncertain and defiant. Are they father and daughter? Husband and wife? Criminal and victim? Or all of the above?
This is David Harrower’s 2005 play, Blackbird, now being revived by director Joe Mantello for a limited run season at the Belasco Theatre. Winner of an Olivier Award for Best Play, Harrower’s play is as bleak as could possibly be imagined, and deals with difficult and confronting issues. It is not a play you enjoy; but it is a play which should be experienced. Just be prepared to leave the production feeling somewhat eviscerated.
At the heart of this play, and perhaps its most disturbing feature, is a love story. When the central characters first meet, years before the time of the action in the play, he is living alone and she with her parents. They strike up a friendship and one thing leads to another; eventually, the relationship becomes sexual. He is about 40, she about 12.
And there’s the rub.
He goes to jail, emerges having served his term and relocates with a new name. He gets a job as some sort of petty bureaucrat, forced to work in a soulless building to process unspecified orders and help other staffers. He is in a relationship with a woman who has children, not by him. He is haunted by what happened, a sense of constant fear of discovery strong about him; there is nothing relaxed about any part of his being.
She sees his photo in a paper and tracks him down. She appears at his office, demanding to see him. Alarmed, surprised, scared, he takes her to the canteen room and shuts the door, wanting to keep the prying eyes and whispering mouths of his co-workers closed to the truth. She is more overt, almost hopping mad it seems, and she opens the door to let their conversation out, as if the pressure of keeping it quiet has finally become too much for her.
And so, for about 90 minutes, the pair talk, argue, reflect and meditate. Recrimination and fear gives way to inquiry, tentative interest, shared understanding and wistful regret. The shadow of the past recedes, replaced with the shadow of the present, blocking the horizon of the future. As the piece goes on, the characters almost grate the facades from each other, shredding the protective shields each have built to ensure their survival. Everything is raw and anything can happen.
Then the lights go out.
There is no resolution for these characters and one doubts there could be. Is society ready for a world where a 40 year old man has sex with a 12 year old, is jailed for it, but then they reconnect and live happily ever after? It’s an interesting question though, especially if it is the victim who now wants to rekindle the relationship.
Ibsen played with similar themes in The Master Builder and there resolution involved the death of the man. Harrower takes a different, harder option, condemning his transgressing male to life - and, especially, life without the woman he probably truly loves.
Towards the end of the play, apart from the stunning black-out moment, there are at least two shocking moments. One, perhaps inevitable, is horrifying to watch, not because of what it is but because of the memory it invokes. The other, just as grim, is an unexpected plot twist, one which seems to shatter the string of sanity by which the woman is hanging. Both are electric, powerful theatrical moments.
As Ray, Jeff Daniels is in excellent form. He radiates dullness and irritability, and you can see what his life has been since his love for the girl was exposed. Equally, there is a hard edge to him, a latent brutality which seethes below the surface, escaping every now and then. Daniels makes Ray ordinary, everyday, which, of course, accentuates the uniquely painful position in which he exists.
To give him his due, Daniels manages the near impossible feat of establishing a degree of credible empathy for the situation his Roy finds himself in. He has strayed from the path, been punished, tried to live better and differently, only to have the child who so entranced him track him down, confront him, tempt him again - but this time as a woman. The agony in his voice when he reassures her that she was the only one - extraordinary.
There is no trace of the intellectual about Daniels here. He is morbidly masculine and dimly a cog in a wheel he partially, perhaps fully, understands. It’s a vigorous and bracing performance of bruising honesty.
As Una, Michelle Williams is an intoxicating blend of child and woman, clinging on to what was, the moment in time which has defined her for life, but trying to move forward, to confront or possess her demons - either way, to get them behind her. Frail and flighty, stubborn and aggressive, she manages all of the attributes of childhood tantrums while, at the same time, pulsing with a lost innocence, a stolen virtue, a compromised sense of self that makes her seem more Ophelia than Lolita.
Her long speeches are hypnotic, so intensely invested in every sentence, every phrase is Williams. She can snarl and smile on a dime and her obvious passions are never far from the surface. When she feels betrayed or compromised, you can see her entire form arch in rebellion. She is magnetic and mature. It is easy to imagine what Daniels’ Ray found so irresistible.
Which, of course, is meant to be problematic. Should the audience empathise with Ray? Should the audience want this pair to get together given their past? Should bygones be bygones if Una wants it that way? Or has what damaged her meant that her choice her is not her own any more? These weighty questions will punch your stomach long after you leave the Belasco Theatre.
Mantello has produced a smooth and revoltingly fascinating/fascinatingly revolting take on Harrower’s play. The sharp edges are razor sharp and both Daniels and Williams are wholly convincing. The big questions are still asked. The answers are up to you.
The elderly Jewish ladies who sat next to me remarked to each other at the play’s end that Blackbird was the strangest romantic play they had ever seen.
Quite.