REVIEWS ...
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Drama confronts a disturbing past
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
David Mamet's Oleanna, that oft-produced play about a young woman's ruinous confrontation with her older professor, has nothing on David Harrower's Blackbird.
Winner of the 2007 Olivier Award as best play, Blackbird is emphatically not a he-said/she-said drama. The facts of this pair's shared history are never in dispute. And they are deeply disturbing.
Harrower's play, which has just opened at GableStage, is as intense as two-character dramas come. In real time, a 55-year-old named Ray (Gordon McConnell) and the 27-year-old Una (Mary Rasmussen) dissect, argue about and revisit the intense sexual relationship they had 15 years earlier. Yes, the math is correct: He was 40. She was 12.
That particular "secret" is revealed early on, and it is critical to understanding the firestorm of emotions in the play's taut 80 minutes.
Ray, who has ushered Una into the pigsty of a break room at the manufacturing plant where he is employed, clearly had planned on never revisiting the most sordid chapter of his past. He has moved on -- relocating after serving a prison sentence, changing his name, beginning a new relationship with a mature woman. His agitation in Una's presence makes it abundantly clear that she is the last person he ever wanted to see again.
Una, an unhappy beauty, is clearly and understandably damaged -- and out for something. Revenge? Answers? Some kind of psychological or emotional closure? All of those things, it turns out.
For Blackbird to wield every moment of its considerable dramatic power, a production needs two gifted and abundantly nuanced actors, as well as direction that knows when to push and when to let up, how to illuminate a current of sexual tension between a man still deeply in denial and a young woman who lost more than her virginity.
Director Joseph Adler stages the dramatic duet with every bit of that finesse. McConnell, who won the best actor Carbonell Award for playing a child killer in GableStage's Frozen, imbues another kind of monster with a pitiable, repugnant lack of self-understanding. Rasmussen, a recent Juilliard grad, is both mesmerizing and devastating, utilizing everything from the tiniest twitches of her face to near-operatic rages to paint a portrait of ruin.
There is a second surprise near the end of the play that detonates without really working. Lyle Baskin's set gives Ray and Una an opportunity to further trash the place in a way that becomes symbolically sexual.
Blackbird is tough to watch. But a powerful production and two brilliant actors make it impossible to turn away.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
Thursday, March 13, 2007
TWISTED, SEEDY TALE CARRIED BY FINE ACTING
By Hap Erstein, Theater Writer
The verdict: A powerful, unconventional love story, featuring a pair of memorable performances. B+
There is a love story being played out at GableStage, but it is one of the most twisted and perverse relationships you are likely ever to witness. Still, that does not prevent it from being as compelling as it is disturbing.
Although David Harrower's Blackbird, the 2006 Olivier Award winner for best new play, lasts a mere 80 intermissionless minutes, its story unfolds slowly. Facts are revealed in fragments, long after we have met Una (Mary Rasmussen) and Ray (Gordon McConnell), the drama's combative former, and perhaps future, lovers.
She is 27, and he is 56, but their three-month sexual encounter happened 15 years before, so a quick calculation reveals that we are dealing in the terrain of pedophilia. She tracks him down after Ray has established a new life and identity following prison.
As they replay memories of their masochistic match-up, it's apparent Una wants something from Ray, and we gradually see that perhaps it is a resumption of their affair.
Based loosely on an actual case from five years ago involving an ex-Marine and a 12-year-old schoolgirl, Blackbird, directed by Joe Adler, wants us to consider child abuse in a new light. Lake Worth's McConnell gives one of his best performances yet in a lengthy career, playing a man trying desperately to keep his reinvented life from cracking open. Rasmussen, a recent Juilliard graduate, is a genuine find who deftly navigates the emotional and verbal shards of her role.
Blackbird is not a play that many companies other than GableStage would produce, but it demonstrates again why the company is such a visceral force in the South Florida theater community.
