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BLACKBIRD By David Harrower First Performance: at King’s Theatre at Edinburgh on 15th August of 2005. First Publication: 2005

1. THE TEXT 1.1 PLOT Ray, a man on his fifties, receive a visit from a woman on her late twenties, Una. There, it can be seen how both of them behave a little strange especially Una who confronts him a little bit aggressive. As the play progresses, it is known that Una suffered a sexual abuse from Ray when she was twelve years old and she came back to know his full story of it. They both exchange their versions of the events that contribute to their relation and narrate the life-changing effects that it has been done to their lives. When the event happened, they ran off together, and, while Ray was taking time to realize what was happening, he left her alone in a guest home at the coast. She got worried and left to look for him. She seeks for explanations, making him claiming that he truly loved her and that he came back for her which not makes him a paedophile. Later, they describe their current lives and finally kissing and undressing each other. After all, a twelve-year-old girl enters and tells Ray that she is waiting with her mother outside. Una challenge him again but he claims that he is only taking care of her. Ultimately, he runs out and Una goes after him. 1.2 CHARACTERS Una: She is a woman in her late twenties. Her story is based on a bizarre love story where she had relationships with a man of forty years old when she was twelve. He took her to a guest house where they had sex and where he abandoned her. He claims that he always have seen in her a lonely girl whose parents ignored her and that she was much more mature than the other girls of her age. She clarifies all the psychological repercussions that she suffered since the events, moreover, her parents exerted on her a psychological pressure on her blaming her for what happened. She insinuates to hate or blame him for what happened but at the same time she seems to still be a little in love with him. She wrote him several letters that never reached him where she had violent thoughts about him. However, she does not seem to look back the encounter as traumatic but rather was attached later to it.

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Ray: A man in his fifties now. According to his version of the story he fell in love with her when she was twelve because he saw on her a more mature and strong girl than the girls he dated before. He explains that his life was difficult then when he ran off with her, also he claims that it was a mistake and that it destroyed his life “What they called me, Spat on kicked. Shit, human shit thrown in my face. You know I wasn’t one of them.” (32) But nevertheless later on the play he tells her that he wrote letters while he was in jail explaining that he truly loved her and never abandoned her. After jail’s life he managed to achieve a new life with a new partner to whom he did not confess what he did yet. Finally, a 12-year-old girl appears and tells him that she and her mother are waiting for him outside. Una doesn't believe this and runs after him trying to stop what she thinks that might happen. For the clues given by the way the character expresses himself at the end “No, I could never. I take care of her. Believe me” (85) implies that he is doing the same that happened years ago again.

1.3 STRUCTURE This play is not structured neither acts nor scenes. It is an only one act that develops its story in the same space, the Ray’s office. The plot keeps continuous, with no leaps to the past, only the two of them narrating the story that evokes to the past. It is not until almost the final of the play that we can know some details more about them even though the play ends in a doubtfulness state. 1.4 STYLE, LANGUAGE USED As it can be seen all over the play, the characters use short sentences which are not finished since they interrupt each other almost all the time. The characters’ language is of use to highlight the conflict of emotions that they have. The language reduction accomplishes simplistic moral judgements. Moreover, Harrower knows how to break the syntax, how to use half-completed sentences, giving tension with the well-timed interruptions and starling outburst of violence action. The structure of the dialogues is complex; some themes come and go, giving a circular structure that is why at the beginning of the play we do not know anything about them. Also it should be noted that the interruptions not only expresses the anguish and discomfort that they are living; but also they readjusting their emotions while talking. This language structure changes radically in Una’s monologue, in which she describes her version of the events during that night in the guest house. The length of the monologue is almost 10 pages in the written version, describing explicitly all the actions with short sentences “We undressed. We had sex on one of the beds. I don’t know how long for. I saw how much pleasure it gave you.”(51) Highlighting each move to empower Una’s strength now.

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Finally, the silence in the play is crucial. The punctuation that the dialogue has; such as the full stops or the interruptions that they had, is essential to give that realistic point of view to the conversation. They reactions depend on what the other says, so their mood swings are linked to the musicality of the dialogue. Moreover, Harrower does not make many indications. Most of them remark gestures or stares, and sometimes the movement of the actors. He, however, does not indicate the tone or volume of most of his dialogue.

1.5 STAGE DESIGN The stage is pretty ordinary, an office where there is a low table with some chairs and several lockers around. In the room there is a bin crowded of litter and also all over the floor a bunch of junk such as sandwich wrappers and food scraps still visible that can symbolize the mess of Ray’s life. There is also a window where we can occasionally see passing figures.

2. CRITICAL EVALUATION From the beginning of the play, we see a strong Una that arrives to Ray’s office to confront him. The fact is that she is willing to go ahead with her life, but before, she wants to know Ray’s version to finally close the wound that she has. Whereas, Ray seems to have been closed the wound while time ago, so for him the encounter with Una means to reopen that wound that took him so long to move forward which makes him talk about his current life and what he has been down since jail. Their past tortures them, and it can be seen in their unclear identities. Their relationship is a complex one since their past brings up memories that are linked to traumas that lead us to the key of the play: the role that one person can assume for living traumatic experiences, the human’s memory. Those memories not only belong to a distant past, but also have been shaped by other and by the consequences of their relationship. Hence, what happened then affects to their lives now. Una came back to Ray looking for answers as they have different perspectives of the story and of themselves. Una seems sure that she has had been abused but Ray try to explain her that he fell in love with her which at the end of the play can be reconsidered as a lie due to the fact that he is doing the same with another child. However, each version does not to seem clear at all because of the uncertainty about their imposed roles of the abuser and the victim. While reading the play, Harrower, do not clarify the story and in fact it ends uncertain. We are forced to interpret the characters’ story with that incertitude that defines the play. 3

With Blackbird, David Harrower addresses one of the few taboos that our society has been living for a long time. It seems that he wants to change our mind about paedophilia but he does not want to. He provides enough psychological tips to the audience to judge themselves. So he let us judge about this issue.

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