A.C.T. performs David Harrower's BLACKBIRD
BLACKBIRD
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
A.C.T. of San Francisco is currently performing BLACKBIRD.
Written by David Harrower and directed by Loretta Greco, the play is a moral hybrid vacillating somewhere between the blithely passionate innocence of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET and the obsessive delirium of Nabokov's LOLITA.
In the vernacular of England, the title is the equivalent of our word jailbird.
The jailbird in this case is a fifty something ex-convict who did time following his conviction for having had an affair with a twelve-year-old girl when he was forty.
Despite his efforts to take on a new identity and start a new life, his victim finds him.
While the script is captivating and extremely well crafted, it seems that its intent is to produce both ambiguity or ambivalence.
If one limits oneself to the essential facts i.e. a 40-year-old man has had sex with 12-year-old girl, then it is easy to pass judgment.
The problem is that once one ventures beyond the letter and the spirit of the law, one quickly loses ones moral bearings in a blurry morass of relativism and mitigating circumstances.
Should our outrage be focused on the age at which the young girl was illegally ushered in to premature womanhood?
Let us remember that Juliet's mother was 12 when she married and Juliet had just turned 13 when she married her Romeo and yet Shakespeare's play has swooned romantic audiences for centuries.
Remember too that Italian director Franco Zeffirelli stunned the screen world making ROMEO AND JULIET.
His daring opus immediately became a film classic that would garner a host of international film awards, earn four Academy Award nominations, become one of the most popular motion pictures of all time and it contained a nude scene with Olivia Hussey cast as a thirteen-year-old child bride on her wedding night.
Perhaps age is not the factor; maybe it is the age difference that is the real chaffing point?
How many women has Donald Trump courted and/or married that were 30 years his junior?
And what about Paul McCartney?
His rapacious ex-wife was more than 30 years his junior.
The titillating edge on most Hollywood tabloid love stories derives from the age differences.
Remember too that a significant age difference is not only implicit to the term trophy wife, it is sine qua non.
While no one is expected to pardon the blackbird for his egregious offenses, Harrower's play does pose the question: "From whence does the psychological damage derive?"
Was it during the man and girl's early infatuation period?
Was it during their first and only sexual encounter?
Was it when the police, against the 12-year-old's will, drugged her and pried her legs apart to swab for evidence?
Was it when the defense attorney directed the accused to say that he planned to abandon the girl immediately after the consummation; predicting that the prevarication, while devastating the girl, would earn a lighter sentence than the truth: that he planned to marry her some day?
Was it the girl's parents who refused to relocate from the area in which the scandal took place thereby baiting the inevitable ostracism that the victim would face?
Was it the girl's parent who blamed the victim rather than the convicted?
As the artistic director of A.C.T. remarks, the play is wrought with "eloquence and startling reversals."
Therein lies the irony of the play: if it is eloquent then wherein lies the ambiguity and if it is about the ultimate crime of a sexual predator wherein is the opportunity for a reversal?
The pre-opening night hype consistently claimed that the play was disturbing; that is an understatement.
Actors Steven Culp and Jessi Campbell really pull the control rods on this one.
When Una hoists her skirt and is reclining on a table in the employee cafeteria inviting Peter to revisit the scene of the crime, the audience is panting when they know they should not be.
If you are ready for a little cognitive turmoil, contradiction and moral effacement, then this play is for you.
It will leave you thinking, or perhaps fantasizing, for days.
For tickets call the box office at 415.749.2250 and leave moral pretense and preconceived judgments at home, otherwise, they could get damaged or broken.
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