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by David Harrower, directed by Dean Deffett

Talk Is Free Theatre, Hope United Church, 2550 Danforth Avenue, Toronto

October 2-18, 2025

Una: “How many other twelve year olds have you had sex with?”

Blackbird is a thrilling experience. Watching the play is like waiting for a bomb to off. The two-hander by Briton David Harrower generates so much tension that I found myself clutching my chair. Then the conclusion knocked all the breath out of me. The subject, a young woman confronting the man who molested her as a child, is already extremely combustible. Director Dean Duffett has drawn such intense, highly detailed performances from his cast that you feel less like you’re watching a play and more like you’re spying on a real-life drama that you just can’t turn away from. It’s a show no theatre-lover should miss.

This is the third time I have seen Blackbird. The first was the fantastic original West End production in 2006 at the Albery Theatre that seats 872. The second was the terribly miscast Canadian Stage production in 2009 at the Berkeley Street Theatre that seats 244. The current site-specific production from Barrie’s always inventive Talk Is Free Theatre takes place in a meeting room in the Hope United Church on Danforth that seats only 18. This location makes the single claustrophobic setting in the staff room of a pharmaceutical factory all too palpable, something that can be suggested but never fully achieved in a theatre.

As we wait for the show to start, suddenly the twentysomething Una rushes into the heavily littered room almost pushed there by the fiftysomething Ray. Una has tracked down Ray to this spot and his and our initial question is “Why?” From fragments of speech uttered by these two anxious, emotional characters, we gather that Ray and Una had had a passionate sexual relationship fifteen years earlier when Una was only twelve.

Through the play’s uninterrupted 80-minute running time, Harrower forces us constantly to reassess what happened between the two fifteen years ago and what is happening between the two now. The play is so gripping because the more information we know, the more dangerous the situation seems.

Our first assessment is that Ray’s relationship with the underaged Una was discovered and he was justly sentenced to prison as a child molester. Since his release he has changed his name, relocated and tried to start a new life. The two must have been ordered never to see each other again. So why has Una deliberately ignored this order? At first it seems that Una has pursued him to upbraid him with all the suffering his actions caused her. This initial view is conditioned by what we consider societal norms and by clichés of child abuse stories.

What begins to become more jarring is Una’s relentless probing into what Ray’s life is like now. Is he married? Does he have children? Does he still lust after minors? At first, Ray wants to tell Una nothing. Under pressure, he says he is married, he has no children, he has told his wife about his past and Una was the only child he ever was sexually attracted to. He even says that Una was wiser at twelve than his present wife is even though she is one year older than he is.

We start to realize that Una is so keen on prying into Ray’s life not just to assure herself that his life was ruined as much as hers was but also to discover if he still loves her. She wants to determine is she was the only one in his life, a likely reason Harrower named her “Una”.

Their description of their final night together that inadvertently led to Ray’s arrest is devastating. The missed chances and mistaken assumptions seem like an all-too-realistic version of the accidents and mistimings in Act 4 and the beginning of Act 5 of Romeo and Juliet. This is not all, for Harrower continues to undermine our construction of the characters and what they want right up to the end.

Both roles are extraordinarily difficult. Both performers must act in such a way that their words convey only part of what they feel. Both use words both to coddle and wound. Both Cyrus Lane as Ray and Kirstyn Russelle as Una give outstanding performances. Lane plays Ray as if Ray were a cornered animal waiting for a predator to attack. In the short period of the action Lane has Ray shift from expressing anxiety and fear to frustration and tenderness, all the while showing that Ray never quite rids himself of his initial reactions. What Lane does particularly well is to capture the ambiguity of Ray’s responses. We keep having to ask ourselves how much of what Ray says is the truth and how much is said merely to placate Una or to make himself look better in her eyes that he really is.

Kirstyn Russelle also presents Una as an ambiguous figure, but one with more purpose than Ray. We first see Russelle’s Una as a justifiably angry young woman even though we come to realize that there could be multiple causes for Una’s anger. Russelle makes Una’s initial badgering of Ray seem as if she is trying to punish him as much as to discover what he has done with his life for the past fifteen years. Subtly, though, Russelle has Una alter her tone even if a note of disdain is always present. Eventually, Russelle makes us understand that Una has come to find out whether she really was “the only one” for Ray just as we see that Ray was, and still is, “the only one” for her.

Director Dean Deffett is aware that the close quarters in which the play is performed magnify the actors’ smallest gestures. A simple act like Una allowing Ray to bring her a bottle of water looks the start of reconciliation. Una allowing Ray’s little finger to touch hers looks like an attempt on Ray’s part to remind Una of the love they shared. Because of this we are much more alert than we would be in a large theatre of every move and gesture the two characters make as we try to find some clue to how this fraught meeting is evolving.

In our search for clues, we note how costume designer Sequoia Erickson has dressed the two. Ray is a man who says he wants to be invisible. Erickson has given Ray such a nondescript shirt, tie, pants and shoes that we, like Una, are unsure what rank, if any, Ray might have in his new job. As for Una, Erickson does not give her the gloves specified in Harrower’s description. Rather, Erickson makes it obvious that Una has dressed up for this meeting with a flowery, low-cut one-piece dress and a classy purse that matches her high heels. Una’s outfit signals both that she has become successful and that she wants to appear desirable.

The electricity that Lane and Russelle generate is tangible as we hang on to every word and pause hoping for resolution but fearing disaster. It is greatly to Toronto’s benefit that Talk Is Free has made its visits to Toronto more frequent. With each of its site-specific productions, Talk Is Free reminds us that insightful direction and committed acting are all one needs to create engaging theatre. There are so few performances of Blackbird and so few seats that people who really love the theatre should act quickly to secure entry to a small room where it feels like the world will collapse.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Cyrus Lane as Ray and Kirstyn Russelle as Una. © 2025 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.tift.ca.