Advertisement

News

Blackbird wings high

BLACKBIRD by David Harrower, directed by Joel Greenberg (Studio 180/Canadian Stage at Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley). To April 4, Monday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Saturday 2 pm. $20-$45. 416-368-3110. See listing. Rating: NNN


You can never really understand a couple’s relationship, what draws two people together and then keeps them together or blows them apart.

[rssbreak]

But things are a little murkier in David Harrower’s Blackbird, in which, fifteen years previously, the 40-year-old Ray and the 12-year-old Una became lovers. They ran off together to a seaside town, but the authorities soon caught up with them Ray went to jail while family and community heaped shame on Una.

As the play begins, the grown-up Una confronts Ray, who’s changed his name and tried to forge a new life, about their shared past. Michael Gianfrancesco’s set, a litter-strewn office lunchroom, offers a visual parallel to the characters’ emotional mess as they search through their history for explanations and resolutions.

Hardee T. Lineham’s Ray is initially fearful, confronted by a ghost he’s never able to forget. As the confrontation escalates, he alternates between the blustery and the deflated, rarely able to hold the control in this constantly shifting power relationship.

There’s more steeliness in Jessica Greenberg’s Una, whose initial testiness, cold anger and hard voice push Ray to the wall a number of times. She also knows how to use her adult sexuality to taunt him, even has a moment or two of maternal concern for Ray. It’s also clear when Una’s off-balance: Greenberg’s voice rises a few notes and with that higher pitch comes an insecurity.

Harrower’s script, a mix of single words, half-sentences and floods of explanation, emphasizes the ambiguity of their relationship, with an intentionally unclear sense of who led and who followed, of premeditation versus chance. It also suggests that deeper feelings underlay the sexual interest. His best writing is Ray and Una’s alternate perspectives of their seaside visit, an examination of needs, joys and fears that deepens the pair’s motivations.

It’s in this long speech that Greenberg could use more variety in pace and emotional levels until then, director Joel Greenberg controls the flow of speech and feeling with admirable skill. The actor narrates the past from a distance and doesn’t seem drained at its conclusion.

If that’s a conscious choice, it removes us from Una rather than lets us see into her, into the loss she felt and maybe still feels. In contrast, Lineham relives Ray’s version of that fateful day, never having totally forgotten its horrors and aware that no matter what his future is, he’ll always ache for someone he considered his lover.

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted