Only five more shows to go - don't miss Blackbird ....
http://www.thelistener.co.nz/issue/3502/artsbooks/9087/reeling_in_the_years.html
Monday, June 18, 2007
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Another excellent review ...
THEATRE REVIEW
WHAT: Blackbird by David Harrower, directed by Jane Waddell.
WHERE: Circa 2. Till 23 June.
REVIEWED BY: Laurie Atkinson.
“Truth is rarely pure, and never simple,” said Lady Bracknell. Though David Harrower’s searing and emotionally riveting drama Blackbird is as far from Wildean comedy as you can imagine, it bears out the truth of her statement in an area of life that is highly complex and clouded by fear, hatred and disgust.
Set in a litter-strewn lunchroom of a non-descript business somewhere in England, Blackbird is a confrontation between 56-year-old Ray, who is in middle management of the business and 27-year-old Una who was sexually abused by him when she was twelve. Or was she?
Ray served a prison sentence and then changed his name and moved to a new city and found a new job. Una has tracked him down through a photograph in some trade paper. What does she want? Revenge? Closure? An explanation of why he deserted her? To show that she suffered more than he did from what happened to her before and after the trial?
Questions that intricately undermine easy assumptions, conventional attitudes, and moral stands are raised throughout the play. Just as the litter in the lunchroom is a reflection of the characters’ emotional turmoil and the shadowy figures seen through the frosted windows of the lunchroom as they pass along the corridor seem to represent us, the audience, who may discover some of the truth but never all of it, Blackbird provides no answers to human frailty and desire, only a devastating and compassionate presentation of it in action.
Jane Waddell’s excellent production is blessed with two superb performances that gripped the opening night audience. Nick Blake’s twitching panic when Ray is first confronted by Una is unnerving to watch, and when later, scrunched up on the floor in a ball of guilt as Una describes what happened to her after he had apparently abandoned her in a strange town, his pain is palpable. But the impressive aspect of his performance is that he makes Ray a decent, ordinary man trying to cope with a guilty past.
Rachel Forman leaves one guessing all the time about Una in a performance that ranges from snarling mockery to ferocious outbursts of anger and mental instability. She creates a sense of danger, that anything could happen, and that Una was a victim as well as a victim of her own desires.
Unmissable, challenging and probably unforgettable.
WHAT: Blackbird by David Harrower, directed by Jane Waddell.
WHERE: Circa 2. Till 23 June.
REVIEWED BY: Laurie Atkinson.
“Truth is rarely pure, and never simple,” said Lady Bracknell. Though David Harrower’s searing and emotionally riveting drama Blackbird is as far from Wildean comedy as you can imagine, it bears out the truth of her statement in an area of life that is highly complex and clouded by fear, hatred and disgust.
Set in a litter-strewn lunchroom of a non-descript business somewhere in England, Blackbird is a confrontation between 56-year-old Ray, who is in middle management of the business and 27-year-old Una who was sexually abused by him when she was twelve. Or was she?
Ray served a prison sentence and then changed his name and moved to a new city and found a new job. Una has tracked him down through a photograph in some trade paper. What does she want? Revenge? Closure? An explanation of why he deserted her? To show that she suffered more than he did from what happened to her before and after the trial?
Questions that intricately undermine easy assumptions, conventional attitudes, and moral stands are raised throughout the play. Just as the litter in the lunchroom is a reflection of the characters’ emotional turmoil and the shadowy figures seen through the frosted windows of the lunchroom as they pass along the corridor seem to represent us, the audience, who may discover some of the truth but never all of it, Blackbird provides no answers to human frailty and desire, only a devastating and compassionate presentation of it in action.
Jane Waddell’s excellent production is blessed with two superb performances that gripped the opening night audience. Nick Blake’s twitching panic when Ray is first confronted by Una is unnerving to watch, and when later, scrunched up on the floor in a ball of guilt as Una describes what happened to her after he had apparently abandoned her in a strange town, his pain is palpable. But the impressive aspect of his performance is that he makes Ray a decent, ordinary man trying to cope with a guilty past.
Rachel Forman leaves one guessing all the time about Una in a performance that ranges from snarling mockery to ferocious outbursts of anger and mental instability. She creates a sense of danger, that anything could happen, and that Una was a victim as well as a victim of her own desires.
Unmissable, challenging and probably unforgettable.
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