Review: Searing Performances in Broadway's 'Blackbird'

"Blackbird," a play by David Harrower, has a shattering premise: A young woman confronts the man who sexually abused her when she was 12 years old. 

Una (Michelle Williams) is a woman at war with herself. She's brittle and tough, sometimes in the same moment. Her movements are jerky; her words jump over themselves. She wants something — at first we think it's closure or at least a chance to tell the man what he did to her. And perhaps that's what Una herself thinks, as Ray (Jeff Daniels) propels her harshly down a gray office hallway to a conference room strewn with trash. 

But it turns out to be something else entirely. Maybe, 15 years later, she's still in love. Maybe he is, too. 

That an inexperienced, naive, 12-year-old girl could have been in love with the man who had sex with her — and that as an adult woman she still feels that attachment — is an almost impossible, bordering on unbelievable, idea. Is it Stockholm Syndrome? Can a pre-menstrual girl give consent to sex with a forty-year-old man? And yet, Una remembers the time of their involvement as being one of the happiest of her life. She knows she shouldn't feel that way. But she does.

Yet it's clear, in Williams' searing, indelible performance, that the abuse ruined Una. She is barely functioning. Ray, too, spends much of the taut 80 minutes shaking and sweating. He is afraid her appearance at his office will break his life. 

Director Joe Mantello keeps the show uncomfortable. The power dynamic between Una and Ray constantly shifts, as they stalk through the small conference room like caged animals, their claws bared. These are two people who can only be understood by each other — their relationship is complex and sometimes horrifying. But Williams and Daniels help us believe that these two distressed individuals are real and that we should care about both of them.