Someone at the London Telegraph called David Harrower’s “Blackbird”: “An extraordinary, no-holds-barred drama that both chills and thrills.” Well, chills maybe, given “Blackbird’s” subject matter: An older man and a young woman meet to discuss their illegal, illicit sexual liaison 15 years earlier.
But there are few thrills in the production of “Blackbird” at the Studio Theatre. Except for the very beginning of the play, which is linguistically intriguing (lots of staccato, single words as the characters react to one another as if having been thrown into frigid water) the play seems to be just an unwholesome version of the old, familiar boy-meets-girl story. Except here it’s man-who’s-old-enough-to-know-better meets young girl. The language goes flat and boring and so does the story.
The characters in this play are Una (Lisa Joyce), who shows up unannounced at Ray’s office to discuss events of the past. Ray (Jerry Whiddon), who is now in a stable relationship and has a stepchild, is floored to see Una. The only truly interesting thing that nearly gets to the foreground in the play’s two-and-a-half hours is an answer to the question: Who really did the seducing?
The action takes place in the messiest cafeteria on earth, cleverly designed by Debra Booth. It’s the perfect setting for the food-and-wrapper fight that takes place in one of the few moments of anything but angst in this play, a scene nicely choreographed by director David Muse.
But even this scene seems phony. Harrower is heralded as one of a group of modern young British playwrights who want to force the audience away from its numbness and/or comfort. But this scene smacks of 19th century dramaturgy. You can see its reason for being long before the event happens.
When “Blackbird” ends, a little air has been cleared, a few misunderstandings clarified, but the two characters involved are no closer to a resolution of their problems than they were at the start. The final impression is of a large, ugly loop of primordial passion that exists to torture, nothing more.
If you go
“Blackbird”
Where: The Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Dec. 16; through Dec. 21
Info: $41 to $45, discounts available; 202-332-3300;www.studiotheatre.org
