✭✭✭✩✩

by David Harrower, directed by Joel Greenberg

Studio 180, Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto

Apri 3, 2009

Scottish playwright David Harrower’s Blackbird (2007) is one of new classics of British drama.  It is stunning proof that fully fledged tragedy--even following the Aristotelian unities of time, place and action--can be written in the 21st century.  Like Sophocles’ Oedipus or Seneca’s Phaedra, the play focusses on forbidden love and like those the action moves forward by a discussion that successively uncovers past events.  The modern spin Harrower gives this tragedy is that the more the characters reveal the less clear their situation becomes.  Unfortunately, Joel Greenberg’s production for Studio 180, the play’s Canadian premiere, is seriously miscast, considerably blunting its impact.

In a heavily littered lunchroom Una (Jessica Greenberg) confronts Ray (Hardee T. Lineham), whom she has tracked down to this spot.  Fifteen years ago they had had a passionate sexual relationship.  The problem is that Una was twelve at the time.  Our first reading of the situation is that Ray is a child molester who was justly sentenced to prison.  Since his release he has changed his name, relocated and tried to start a new life.  Una seems to have pursued him to upbraid him with all the suffering his actions caused her.  This view is conditioned by what we consider societal norms and by clichés of child abuse stories.  Over the course of 75 minutes Harrower wrenches us from this view to a more complex view where blame is shared equally by both parties to a further point where “blame” is not as appropriate word as “love.”  It is a terrifying journey for us as well as the characters as Harrower undermines one construction of their relationship after another right up to the end.

Lineham gives a magnificent performance with guilt, rage, desire and humiliation vying for expression in every word he says.  Sadly, Jessica Greenberg’s abilities are far below Lineham’s.  While Lineham looks like a man who has suffered ceaselessly for 15 years, Ms. Greenberg looks like she’s come fresh from a spa treatment.  In the original London production, Jodhi May’s Una seemed dangerously obsessed and wracked with psychological pain.  Ms. Greenberg needs to learn some basics of acting--how better to modulate her voice and vary her gestures and posture--to come even close to conveying the mysteries that lie within her character.  The deadly result is a complete lack of chemistry between the two characters.  Theatre fans will want to see any production of such an important play, but its two actors need to be equally powerful for this Blackbird to fly.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-03-13.

Photo: Jessica Greenberg and Hardee T. Lineham. ©John Karastamatis.