This one’s probably not for date night.
Late twenties-something Una confronts middle-aged Ray about what he did to her fifteen years ago.
To misquote Voltaire, if this play did not exist, it would be natural to assume it did. Written by David Harrower, it won the Olivier for Best New Play in 2007. And if you were a parochial Australian theatre reviewer – yes, the first two adjectives are tautologous – if you were a parochial Australian theatre reviewer, you might be inclined to view this piece as the epitome of the modern British play. It’s gritty. It presents two characters in a room in real time. It goes to a place most of us don’t want to go. It’s constructed from staccato dialogue that eventually blossoms into beautifully written monologues. It gives voice to characters who in public discourse are standardly reduced to stereotypes: either victim or villain.
As a result, it’s tempting to see it as a well-executed writing exercise or some sort of feat of dramatic ability. And there’s certainly much to admire about the skill. It would be terrific to show aspiring playwrights: What does it do? What doesn’t it do?
I’ve suggested a little about what it does, but what about what it chooses not to?
Despite Ray getting half the dialogue, we don’t really ever learn much about him. This is partly because we’re always deliberately left uncertain whether he is being honest or whether he is performing. This could engage an audience or it could tire them. The challenge is that the more realistically Ray is played, the more banality there is in his evil, the less we will see and enjoy – if enjoy is the right word – what might be a theatrical Machiavellian duplicity. But another reason we’re left not knowing much about Ray is because his faults, obvious on an ethical level, remain opaque on an ontological level. If you’re of the hopelessly hopeful school that assumes that every human fault is only the desire for some good somehow gone wrong, then it’s difficult to see, with his particular fault in this presentation, what that good ever was. I suspect twenty years ago, the play encapsulated the movement, the moment, when for the first time this particular crime and its prevalence was openly and seriously discussed. And that was sufficient.
There’s another thing the play deliberately doesn’t do. What we’re shown on stage occurs fifteen years after the original crime. Ray has tried to move on. Una can’t. We hear a lot about the past, but we don’t see it. (Would we want to? No. But then, do we want to be shown the present?) This is a play primarily about consequences rather than causes. What we are shown is how individuals – both perpetrator and victim – try to deal with the past, how they create narratives to try to make sense of their guilt, their pain. But as we haven’t been shown that past, this personal narrative building is oddly untethered, pushing us back on assumptions we held before we entered the theatre. As I’ve said, perhaps twenty years ago ….
But, in the face of those who suffer, and who continue to suffer, it’s ENTIRELY INADEQUATE to say But we’ve talked about this already. Every evil must be faced anew; the price of innocence is eternal vigilance.
Directed by Pippa Thoroughgood, this production powerfully urges that vigilance. Performances are committed and courageous. Charlotte De Wit’s Una is a pathos-inducing portrait of fracture: assertiveness battling uncertainty. Her monologue in which vulnerability predominates is delivered superbly. Phil McGrath’s Ray is aptly unsettling: mundanity blends with belligerence, despondency becomes indistinguishable from duplicity.
Paul Gilchrist
Blackbird by David Harrower
Presented by HER Productions in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Co.
At KXT until 5 July
Image by Ravina Jassani
Theatre Red 
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