article :: Blackbird – Dangerously Brave
by Robin Pittis
June 30 – July 6, 2011
Good theatre, a teacher of mine once told me, is dangerous, and David Harrower’s play Blackbird, currently in production at Burlington’s Tottering Biped theatre, is exactly that.
The play rests on a confrontation between Ray and Una, a man and woman who had an affair 15 years previous. He was 40. She was 12. He has been in prison. And changed his name, too, unsurprisingly.
He was careless enough to be photographed for a trade journal, celebrating the work he’s done at his new job, where his past is unknown, and now Una has tracked him down. She doesn’t seem to want revenge exactly, but the meeting is explosively dangerous, and that makes for great theatre...
