David Harrower's Blackbird

Comments (0) By Steven Leigh Morris Thursday, Aug 25 2011

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Through pedophilia, The Author dissected the exigencies of violence; Blackbird dissects the exigencies of love.

Among the reasons Blackbird can straddle that thin thread between self-parody and love story is the quality of the performances, under Robin Larsen's straight-on staging.

PHOTO BY JOHN FLYNN

Pleading in the dead of night: Corryn Cummins and Sam Anderson in Blackbird

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Rogue Machine Theatre

5041 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019

Category: Performing Arts Venues

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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When Anderson's blusteringly earnest Ray insists to Una, repeatedly, that he's not a serial child-molester, that despite his obvious collapse of judgment and restraint he was obsessed with her not as an object but as a unique spirit, this is hardly news any father would want to hear, but Ray's truth rings true. And with it, a singular love of operatic destiny becomes a possible scenario.

That's what Una does want to hear, that if she was of value, perhaps she still is. Cummins' richly textured portrayal blends militance and heartbreaking vulnerability. And this is where the play touches upon her complicity in the present, and possibly in the past.

Perhaps what's taboo is forbidden not because it's so freakish but because it's so powerful that it must be stifled, for the sake and rights of children, and for the inherent abuses of power that usually come attached. These are issues of protection woven into the law, and into a standard of decorum.

Woody Allen shattered that decorum when news emerged in the early 1990s of a tryst he'd had with his stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, 35 years his junior. During custody proceedings related to Allen's split from Mia Farrow, and after Farrow discovered nude photographs of Previn taken by Allen, the judge called Allen's relationship with Previn "wildly inappropriate." Allen and Previn later married, and remain so.

Harrower's play sets us in the jury box, listening to the judge perched on our shoulders, and the defense of the accused. Somewhere between the two arguments, between propriety and desire, lies an unencumbered truth of what draws people to each other.

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