Customer Reviews

Blackbird: A Play (Faber and Faber Plays)

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Fifteen years ago, Una and Ray had a relationship when Una was 12 and Ray was 40. They haven't set eyes on each other since. Now she's found him again.

I bought this play after seeing it performed. It's the kind of play that follows you around for days after you've seen it.

I think it's a valuable play to have on the bookshelf if you are interested in writing plays. You can learn a lot about sub-text in reading this play.

It's a very brave play and I really feel that David Harrower spent the time to really get into his characters skins. Both characters seem very authentic in an amazing, yet in a very disturbing way.

This play in essence I think is about the hold a pedophile can have over his victim and the complex relationship the victim can have with her perpetrators memory.

Although disturbing I thought the structure of the play was brilliant. If you love plays you need to have this on your bookshelf.

Although the formatting of the text threw me off a bit (it read like a free verse poem at first) after the first page I got used to it and the story and characters totally gripped me. Very powerful, very naturalistic dialogue, and a lot of brilliant subtext. The story deals with two very damaged people trying to get on with their lives in their own way. I wish I had the chance to see the stage production, but reading it is almost as good.

I went to see the play live in Chicago at the Victory Gardens theater. Shocking, gut renching, amazing, heartstopping, those are some of the words I can think of to tell you what I felt while there in the nineth row. I just had to have the script. It is not a subject matter that most people would find good for the stage or even for discussion but having been there and seen it I found I had to have it.

I ordered this play out of curiosity. William Petersen is one of my favorite actors, and he played Ray in a Chicago production of "Blackbird". He got rave reviews and an award for his performance, so I just had to find out what it was all about.
The play is written in an unusual, but natural style. It's full of people arguing, interrupting each other, and finishing each other's sentences. It depicts an encounter between an ex-convict, Ray, and Una, the young woman he sexually abused as a child. The language is frank, perhaps disquieting. The story deals with very current issues, and definitely gives one much food for thought. Of course, there are no easy answers, just like reality. It deals with both characters in a kind way, pointing out their humanity and their faults. "Blackbird" addresses the question of whether one's past mistakes should haunt them forever; but it also deals with the irreparable harm done to the victim. Is Ray a monster? Does he deserve to start a new life, now that he has served his time? Will Una be able to move on, now that she has confronted her abuser? Again, no easy answers, but this gripping drama poses questions that are worth considering, and it gives the audience a peek into the private worlds of both characters. I recommend this play, and I WISH I could have seen it in person.

This play is really chilling. The playwright boldly explores the forbidden relationship between a pre-teen and an older lover, and the emotional roller coaster that occurs. Very moving, disturbing and heartfelt.

David Harrower. Blackbird. Faber and Faber. 87+vi pp. 2006. $13 (pb)

English playwright Harrower wrote Blackbird in 2005 for an Edinburgh premiere. It opened in London in 2006 and in New York in 2007 and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2007. It's essentially a two-character play, an older man and a younger woman in hot argument. (A voice is heard off stage at one point and for two pages a young girl is on stage with the two of them.) The woman is Una. She's twenty-seven. The man is Ray, although he goes by the name Peter now. He's fifty-five.

Fifteen years ago they were lovers. Ray was caught. He was sent to jail. He served his sentence and came out. He has worked hard since then to put his life back in order. He has a woman. She has a daughter. The woman knows about Ray's past but probably not the finer details. She wasn't happy about it but Ray -excuse me, Peter-- is a new man now.

Una isn't a new person. She's never been able to get beyond that time when Ray and she were illicit lovers. She's been frozen in that place for fifteen years -by her parents, who blame her for it, by her neighbors who point at her, by her own crippling and complex feelings about the past and about Ray.

Then one day, she sees Ray's picture in a magazine, a trade journal. There he is in the photo, smiling at the camera, but his name isn't Ray, it's Peter, Peter Trevelyan, how white bread can you get? She confronts him at his work place. He takes her into the locker room so they can talk alone.

They talk non-stop, just the two of them except for a page or two when Ray's new step-daughter comes into the room, for eighty-seven pages, in a glorious language that is at once wholly naturalistic and intensely, elegiacally poetic. They express harrowing sentiments (no pun intended) and exhume old hurts. The play ends without a clear victory or loss for either of them. It's just been a complicated dance --two people with an exceptionally painful joint history to explore but no resolution to it.

First of all, this play to me was intensely thought-provoking and left my mind buzzing after reading it. This dark tale is told in such a way that resembles open verse poetry. This lyrical quality is very unique and makes the play all the more interesting to read. The story has many turns and surprises and gradually develops as the story progresses, and its development is so delicately and skillfully planned that the impact of the story is even more striking. To anyone who loves plays or a good, interesting thought-churning (and for some people shocking) story, I wholeheartedly recommend Blackbird.

I've been reading a lot of "contemporary" plays. This is one of the better ones. I enjoy it for its minamilism. I think the topic is something that deserves to be discussed and the playwright has done a wonderfull job of bringing the subject to light without preaching or teaching. He treats his audience very respectully and masterfully captivates us inside one room with mostly exposition. That's saying a lot.

I went and seen the Play in Chicago in July featuring William Petersen it was great, he was great and I just had to have the script as a momento of my experience.