"BLACKBIRD" SEEKS THE LIGHT AT BEOWULF ALLEY
by Chuck Graham
Let The Show Begin
It has always been my belief we only use a small part of our personality. Just like with the brain itself, most of our personalities stay submerged in our subconscious, percolating along, unseen but always influencing our behavior.
“Blackbird” by Scottish playwright David Harrower wants to dive into the part of this submerged personality that is not only unseen but rarely considered. And when this part of personality is examined, it is always with the most blunt of instruments.
Brave little Beowulf Alley Theatre, downtown behind its new façade at 11 S. Sixth Ave., earns a huge round of Christmas applause for having the courage to mount “Blackbird” with an exceptional cast that never looks back. This is not a happy play with a heartwarming ending.
Think of “Blackbird” as the secular antidote to all that sentimental holiday sugar. A terrific place to get in out of the compulsive yuletide optimism and away from all those tight-jawed shoppers. The title, by the way, is British slang for jailbird.
Art Almquist as Ray and Elizabeth Leadon-Sonnenfelt as Una are the cast. Laura Lippman directs what is essentially a sword fight, or maybe a mental wrestling match, as these two confront each other in a trashy shipping warehouse lunch room.
They haven’t seen each other for 15 years. But when he was 40 and she was 12, they had a sexually consummated love affair. Was it really love? She thought it was. At the time it was something they both wanted.
But he spent three years in prison for it, being continually taunted and tortured by other inmates. Her life was ruined because she had to keep growing up in the same neighborhood where everyone knew what she had done. It felt like being invisible, she remembered, because no one would look at her.
Now as the play opens, she is 27. He is 55, living under another name in a different part of the country, with a responsible job in warehouse management. Out of nowhere she has popped back into his life, has tracked him down among the metal folding chairs and food wrappers scattered around this cluttered communal dining table.
We immediately know both are uncomfortable with this meeting. We just don’t know why. Slowly the tawdry facts come out one by one and we wonder. Was he using her for sex? Is she out for revenge?
Harrower wants to shatter the stereotyped black-and-white assumptions that Ray was evil and Una’s life was destroyed by his sexual abuse. Then we must decide about the aftermath. Was she a precocious adventurer who did truly love him? Is the heart bound by the restrictions of our own Christian culture?
In other countries, in other civilizations, girls who reach puberty are whisked into marriage. Why wait? If Una had been born into a different culture, her embrace of sex would have been applauded by the entire community.
So just how valid is our own rush to judgment? Harrower wants to take a longer view. Ray and Una, through exceptionally fine performances by Almquist and Leadon-Sonnenfelt, provide windows into aspects of the human spirit that need more light.
Harrower is particularly careful not to make excuses for Ray’s behavior, nor to blame Una for being a latter-day Lolita. Situational ethics may be a controversial attitude, but some situations stay draped in such heavy taboos there is little understanding for those unfortunate enough to be caught under the covers.
“Blackbird” continues through Dec. 19 in performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, in the Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave. Tickets are $21 online, $23 at the box office, with other discounts available. For details and reservations, 882-0555, or visit www.beowulfalley.org
