March 13, 2006: Harrower, Blackbird
Albery Theatre. Directed by Peter Stein
Essentially a two-character play; a third character, a young teenage or pre-teen girl, called a “Child” in the program, comes on almost at the end. One scene — the staff room of a business enterprise, very spare, with a long table and eight or so functional plastic chairs; frosted glass in the door and along the upper walls, through which, early on, a few employees can be seen moving by; one comes in, changes out of a work coat and is gone. Late afternoon.
This is the scene in which a young adult woman, Una, comes to confront the fiftyish Ray, an employee of the firm, for his sexual abuse of her when she was twelve and he was forty. The play is beautifully yet sparely written; the text, a copy of which I purchased at a bargain rate (£5.—) in the theatre lobby at the end, is written in a kind of free verse. The acting is so skillful and accomplished, the direction so brilliant in carrying out the requirements and implications of the script, and the play itself so “right” and truthful in its discovery and rendering of deep-felt emotion, in all its complexity, that words fail me in trying to describe the experience of this work.
The topic is pedophilia — which we translate realistically as “child sexual abuse” but which comes into the language in a more literal way as “child love.” And it is precisely in the interstices of the network that interlaces the legal and the human that the dramatist has sought out, and discovered, the profound dynamics of this sad, almost tragic, story. The pace of the unfolding of this reunion, sought out by Una initially, it seems, for the purpose of confrontation, but later, as it appears, for reasons less easily defined, is rapid and sure; but there is scope for the building up of several climaxes, much physical energy being expended by both. Toward the end of this two-hour, interval-less marathon, there is a knock-down, drag-out fight, involving the hurling of trash receptacles, overflowing with the detritus of workers’ lunches, and the throwing of chairs. And as the truth of the three-months’ encounter of this forty-year-old man with a physically precocious sub-teen comes out, as it does, by degrees, the fighting eventually leads to a real sexual encounter, upstage, above the table, on the floor — but it is broken off by Ray, who, initially full of ardor renewed for this now very sexually enticing, deeply wronged yet still, somehow, loving woman, cannot bring himself to close with her. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
And at that moment his name — the new name he has adopted to cover his shameful past: “Peter” — is called out from offstage by a high-pitched female voice, and the young girl, the “Child,” answers and, after a few moments, sees Una and wants to know who she is. The truth, we feel, will come out, much to Ray’s shame and discredit, though he packs the girl off abruptly.
And then, suddenly, as raucous music blasts our ears, the upstage wal