A Bleak Blackbird

Blackbird by David Harrower
Directed by Margaret-Mary Hollins
Auckland Theatre Company
Maidment Theatre
Closing dateSeptember 27

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life you were only waiting for this moment to arise”
Blackbird – Paul McCartney

Most people are appalled at the idea of adult men having relationships with children and the laws of most counties expressly forbid it. There are, however, many Muslim countries where marriage to children is permitted. This practice was even given a blessing by Mohammed who married one wife when she was six although he did not consummate the marriage until she was nine.

Such practices are indicative of a religion and culture founded on primitive male-centred logic but that a society can approve of such activities shows how our attitudes to sexuality are determined by social, cultural and religious dictates.

David Harrower’s play Blackbird does not advocate such relationships but the playwright is fascinated by the outcomes and implications of them.

The play is a Lolita-style tale of a Ray (Michael Hurst) confronted by a young woman Una (Liesha Ward Knox) with whom he had a sexual relationship 15 years ago when she was 12.

She turns up at his workplace and they spend an hour and a half in the bleak tea rooms confronting each other and their past and present lives.

It is a gruelling and testing work as both the actors and the audience struggle with issues of sexual abuse, romantic love, lust and sexual fantasy.

And it raises questions about guilt, remorse and responsibilities associated with illegal or immoral events.

The last time the two had seen each other was the last night of their relationship when he wandered off to get cigarettes, got lost and she set the wheels in motion of his arrest and imprisonment.

Like the lines from the Beatles song, they “take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

The two protagonists slowly piece together their versions of the events, revealing the conflicting emotions of the event and the subsequent unresolved feelings and recriminations.

Why has she come looking for him – the lingering sexual aspects of their relationships, the desire for revenge or seeking the truth about the events and herself?

The action is set in a rubbish-strewn room, which provides a physical equivalent of the two lives littered with scraps of memory and the wasteland of their lives.

There is an emotional intensity as each unleashes a barrage of recriminations and allegation, apologies and confessions as they relive the event of 15 years before.
There is a search for the truth of their experiences and feelings as they delve into their shared and individual memories.

And at the end it is for the audience to decide if this was reconciliation or the start of a new relationship.

Michael Hurst was brilliant as the nervous wretched Ray, wringing emotion out of the character. One has a sense of the man’s mind ticking over trying to make sense of his situation; confronted with a former lover, concerned about his colleagues outside and aware of his wife waiting for him. In his recall of the events he manages to express the confusion of the past as well as the distress at the recollections and gives us a sense of his conflicting emotions

Early on Liesha Ward Knox had difficulty with projection, with many of her lines too softly spoken or garbled, but she soon settled in and delivered a punchy, exquisite monologue in her account of events.

Although she has a striking presence on stage she was unable to capture the flawed character the script requires. There was never a sense of her creating a dramatic character with emotional density to match Hurst’s Ray.

Margaret-Mary Hollins’ directing is astute and her use of figures passing by in the corridor beyond the tearooms helps create an additional tension in the work.

The set and costumes designed by Robin Rawstorne become metaphors for the lives of the two flawed individuals. The bleak room filled with broken equipment overflowing bins, and rubbish strewn about the place is like their own desolate lives. Everything becomes symbolic, Una's red dress, the bottle of water they share and the stain on Rays shirt.

It’s a gutsy well crafted play, filled with pathos, strung out emotions and a bit of humour and it will provide a lot of dinner table conversation.