BLACKBIRD. To 24 August.
Edinburgh
BLACKBIRD
by David Harrower
King's Theatre To 24 August 2005
Mon-Sun 7.30pm Mat 20 August 2.30pm
Runs 2hr No interval
TICKETS: 0131 473 2000
www.eif.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 August
Tough material handled with dramatic boldness and integrity, making for superb drama.
To say this intense, non-stop 2 hours never felt a moment too long is partly to say it's magnificently played. Both actors bring a British ease with detailed realistic understanding of character while German director Peter Stein envelops this in a Euro-visual style that - a sign of his work's quality - never seems to constrict Scottish playwright David Harrower's script.
Such plays are comparatively easy to begin. It's when the specific issue defining the relationship between Peter, mid-50s, and Una, 27, emerges that the threat of narrow 'issue-based' drama becomes problematic. But it's here Harrower begins expanding beyond the obvious character aspects with which he's begun.
It wouldn't be fair to detail the questions and surprises the play offers later on, but the main matter is revealed early. Smart, tightly-clothed Una is a woman visiting at work the man who abducted and abused her when she was a neighbour's 12-year old daughter.
Her tight-wrapped figure loses its composure later on, by when Jodhi May has revealed in a voice that ranges across anger, controlled bitterness, purposeful investigation and seductive pleading, the confused, beat-up personality the experience left her. It wasn't just the sex, but the childhood nightmare of desertion when Peter seemed to have abandoned her abroad.
Throughout, Peter (the name changed from the old days; she only discovered him by chance) provides explanations based on his own confusions then and now. He declares this was a one-off event and doesn't see himself as a paedophile. The truth may be more complex than he admits, but the denial is part of a personality as locked in to its own problems as is Una.
Roger Allam plays with utter truth. The only comparable performance I recall is Tom Georgeson as the convicted child-murderer in Bryony Lavery's Frozen. There's utter understanding, even if here it's of a confused mind. And no attempt to distance actor from character, nor to seek sympathy.
Chiefly what makes this work is the way Harrower, Stein and the actors give a sense of perpetual investigation, a voyage into murky depths which it's always easier for the moment, if destructive in the longer-term, to ignore.
Stein backs the works meeting-room, as strewn with unexplained litter as these lives, with translucent window-panes, through which workers are seen, and which they glance through, as if there are no private lives in such a situation. Japhy Weideman's lighting subtly alters, the strip-lighting glaring down on this confrontation modulating to show empty, anonymous heights above as the characters delve into their memories.
Only in a concluding scene (not in the published script) does theatricality take over from dramaturgy. It makes for a sweeping scene-change but the effectively wordless violence introduces a melodramatic element at odds with the scrupulous probing of personality that's gone before. My advice? Cut it - but make sure the play, and preferably this production and cast, is seen again.
Una: Jodhi May
Ray: Roger Allam
Child: Polly Burns/Megan McPherson
Director: Peter Stein
Designer: Ferdinand Wogerbauer
Lighting: Japhy Weideman
Sound: Ferdinando Nicci
Composer: Arturo Anecchino
Costume: Moidele Bickel
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: David Salter
2005-08-20 10:27:38