Summerhall, Edinburgh
Four stars
It's almost a decade
since David Harrower's relentless study of psychosexual politics
between a fifty something man and the woman he had a sexual
relationship fifteen years earlier when she was twelve premiered at
the Edinburgh International Festival. Then, it broke taboos, however
ambiguous its stance. Now, as the Hawick-based Firebrand company
revive it for a mini tour of intimate spaces, in a post Jimmy Savile
climate where 'paedo' is a standard playground insult and the
vagaries of 1970s liberalism are being thrown back in their apparent
advocates faces, Blackbird looks more troublingly relevant than ever.
Yet there's nothing
exploitative when Romana Abercromby's Una bursts in on Greg Wagland's
Ray at his work-place in Richard Baron's unflinchingly intimate
production. Rather, there's an underlying sense of unfinished
business, even as the mess the pair made of each other's lives seems
to be summed up in the discarded pizza boxes on the floor. Una's
girlishness comes alive when she spins on a broken swivel-chair,
though her lengthy spewed-up confessional later suggests that
girlishness has been corrupted forever. After initial terror of his
past life being exposed, Ray too recognises the bond that lingers as
they edge towards a damaging reconciliation.
With the lights up on
the audience throughout, nothing is hidden on either side of the
experience. Yet, despite the up close and personal scale of the
action, it never feels small. There are moments, in fact, when the
orchestrated linguistic ricochets of action and consequence feel
positively operatic. Only the scenes of sex and violence need to be
more unhinged in a doomed love story with an excess of complications
laid bare even as it dares you to take sides.
The Herald, February 28th 2014
ends
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