@ Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Mar 2016
David Harrower’s Blackbird presents a confrontation between Ray, an unremarkable man in his late fifties and Una, a young woman desperate to uncover the truth about their shocking relationship, which ended fifteen years earlier when Ray was forty and Una only twelve years old. Winning the Olivier Award for Best New Play, Blackbird has been performed worldwide since premiering at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005. Gareth Nicholls’ direction of the jolting piece, offers a clinical analysis of the intricacies and horrors of illegitimate love.
The play begins with “Peter”, Ray’s constructed identity since his release from prison, leading Una furtively into a dingy, litter-strewn room. It is instantly clear that Ray does not want to be there, but Una is insistent on discussing the chilling abuse of power he imposed upon her as a pre-pubescent girl. Paul Higgins, known for TV roles in Utopia and The Thick of It convincingly portrays the bumbling and rather pathetic Ray with the weariness of a man who has spent years analysing his affections for a minor hoping to forgive himself. As the plot unfolds through intense and captivating dialogue, the nature of Ray’s abuse becomes ambiguous as Una is, somewhat predictably, revealed as an archetypal nymphet. Camrie Palmer’s depiction of the wilful yet obfuscated Una is suitably troubling as we see polarities in her emotions and desires for Ray. Successfully evoking pity and trepidation, but occasionally failing to deliver on some of the more unsettling lines with as much devastation as Harrower’s writing demands, Palmer displays Una’s sexually fraught agony with a disturbing Nabakovian “mature naivety”.
Nicholls’ surgically sharp yet simplistic direction allows the dialogue to take precedence and interrogates themes of truth and morality alongside the complexities of a relationship. Calling into question the ethical opacity of the justice system, Una details the intrusive examination she endured against her will; it is as distressing as the graphic descriptions of their illicit sexual past. The shifts in power between the pair results in a brusque climax, leaving the relationship as unresolved and muddied as it was fifteen years previously.
A film adaptation of the glaringly honest Blackbird will be released in 2016.