Blackbird

By Pauline Adamek
ArtsBeatLA.com

Edgy and incendiary — David Harrower’s award-winning and intense drama Blackbird is being staged at the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Hollywood as part of this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival.

In the play a young woman confronts a man who had sexually molested her when she was only 12. But the showdown is fraught with unexpected revelations…

Harrower explores this topical and touchy subject matter with an astonishing fearlessness — imagining an emotional authenticity and mining the drama of the set up to its fullest potential. This is a masterful piece of theater.

Featuring Charlotte Gulezian and Bradley Fisher, the production is exceptionally well-directed by Anna Stromberg. Her cast of two expertly navigate the tricky emotional terrain, especially the ever-shifting power struggle that ensues.

This production has only five performances remaining, including a late session tonight.

Try not to miss it!

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Ambiguities proliferate in Scottish playwright David Harrower’s fascinating, sometimes harrowing drama, which won the 2007 Lawrence Olivier Award for best new play.

The action occurs in the trash-littered breakroom of an unidentified company. A young woman, Una (Charlotte Gulezian), has arrived, demanding to see an employee named Peter. But when he appears, he is now named Ray (Bradley Fisher). Why has he changed his name? He is clearly nervous and frightened by her presence, and strives to persuade her to go outside with him, to avoid embarrassing him before his co-workers. But she is both determined and angry, and intent on some kind of showdown. After some verbal skirmishing, it gradually emerges that the middle-aged Ray seduced her when she was 13 years old.

He’s uncertain what she wants of him, but fearful of the possibilities. Initially, she seems hell-bent on destroying him, but relations between them are volatile and changeable. At times, they seem to be tot

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