Blackbird - Review of 2025 Talk is Free Theatre Production

Blackbird is a marvelous play by David Harrower that was presented at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005 and subsequently produced in London’s West End. The play has raw emotion and searing intensity when two people meet in a garbage covered staff lunchroom. Ray is fifty-five and Una is twenty-seven. He had sex with her when she was twelve. The affair lasted several months and they ran away together but eventually he abandoned her. He was arrested and spent three years and seven months in prison. He has rebuilt his life since and now has a job where Una tracks him down. We witness the reckoning for eighty minutes in a small room that has only 25 seats.

Una (Kirstyn Russelle), an attractive, well-dressed woman saw a picture of Ray (Cyrus Lane) in a magazine and he appears to have a decent office job in a drab building. He does not want to see her or talk with her but he does anyway. She is like a ghost from the past who has lived with memories of their unforgettable relationship without respite. She has written hundreds of letters to him reliving the past and expressing her fury and sorrow.

Ray has worked very hard to put the relationship behind him. His world has changed and prison has broken all his previous relationships. He is in a stable relationship with a woman, her tells us, and near the end of the play a young girl appears. She is his wife’s daughter and appears like a self-confident girl.

The sexual relation with Una was not forced and in fact it appears to have been consensual and affectionate. She remembers him kissing a birthmark on her body without any rancor. Her fury and pain are not at the sexual relationship but at the fact that he left her and did not communicate with her. He did write a letter but could not send it to her because he was not allowed.

The two of them go through a rollercoaster of intense emotions in a display of stunning acting by Russelle and Lane that leaves you exhausted. I cannot heap enough praise on the two actors for stamina, emotional depth and bravura acting.

The complex emotions expressed by both are exquisite pain, fury, and longing for understanding but not rancor. There is slight physical contact after they reach emotional exhaustion and even a kiss but no indication of probable reconciliation. Una at times thought he was a monster and even though we would not hold in high regard someone who had a sexual relationship with a twelve-year-old, yet we are not prepared to look at Ray in that regard. It seems they were genuinely affectionate and there is no evidence of any violence. But statutory rape is statutory rape. Now he is living with a woman with a twelve-year old daughter who shows affection towards him She is played by Lucy Janisse.

Director Dean Deffett does superb work with a script that is played in a small space with two actors that must run through a gamut of intense emotions that keep the audience in thrall.

The play is done at 2550 Danforth Ave (near main Street) in Toronto. If you don’t think there is a theatre there, you are right. The Talk is Free Theatre has a small room in Hope Uni

ted Church. This is a very high-quality production with outstanding performances and I have no idea why the company could not get a better venue.

Blackbird by David Harrower continues until October 18, 2025 at Hope United Church, 2550 Danforth Ave. Toronto, Ontario. www.tift.ca

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