Blackbird

The showdown of the year is taking place at the Belasco Theatre, where David Harrower's knockout play Blackbird is receiving its Broadway premiere. In each corner, an estimable actor gives the performance of a lifetime: Emmy winner Jeff Daniels in one, three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams in the other. When the lights come up after 90 thrilling and utterly shocking minutes, neither is left standing.

The Olivier Award-winning Blackbird made its New York debut in 2007 in a production of Manhattan Theatre Club. This version reunites Daniels with his original director, Joe Mantello, but this is no mere remounting. While it's been nine years, this disquieting drama remains powerful as ever.

After coming across his photo in a trade magazine, Una (Williams) has finally found Ray (Daniels). Fifteen years earlier, when he was 40 and she 12, they made a three-month "mistake" that left her traumatized and him behind bars. Ray subsequently remade his life, changing his name and moving towns. Una has been forced to relive the experience regularly ever since. The events that simultaneously bond and ruin them rear their ugly head as Una and Ray duke it out in a battle that isn't even about revenge. It's about truth.

In the garbage-strewn break room of Ray's workplace (designed with perfectly bland anonymity by Scott Pask), the pair excruciatingly reexamine the night that destroyed their lives as Harrower probes at the dark, uncomfortable questions of abuse and absolution. What really traumatized Una? Was it the adolescent tryst she had with a man who treated her like an adult? Or the psychological victim-shaming that followed at the hands of her family and friends? When it comes to Ray, who now goes by Peter and lives with an older woman, we're made to wonder, just as Una does, precisely what his motives were. All of this leads up to Una and Ray facing the ultimate question: Is forgiveness possible?

Blackbird is a difficult play to watch, one that provokes both tears and audible gasps as secrets are revealed and shocks dispatched. As much as Harrower lets us see the complexities of Ray and Una, it's Daniels and Williams who let us into the raw, emotional nakedness of their characters. Their performances are so revealing that we very much forget we are watching a play.

One of Hollywood's great portrayers of the American everyman, Daniels manages a remarkable feat, drawing our sympathy despite an inherent belief that Ray's actions are entirely unforgiveable. With his hangdog expression and silver hair glistening beneath Brian MacDevitt's fluorescent lighting, Daniels turns in an extraordinarily provocative performance as a man who refuses to see himself as an offender. .
Williams' take on Una is equally fascinating, delivering her lines with a childlike coquettishness that's enhanced by Ann Roth's excellent costume choice: a flimsy, hypersexual kewpie-doll dress. We quickly come to realize that her Una is a marked woman, a girl who has never advanced past her age from the night that scarred her. This heartbreaking case of arrested development burns itself into our brains as Williams delivers a monologue so mesmerizing that our stomachs cannot be kept from turning. Her performance is simply astonishing.

Mantello's directorial hand is a bit too visible at points; particularly during Una's aria, where the lights dim and sound designer Fitz Patton provides a slow rumble underneath Williams' dialogue to draw suspense (it would work just as effectively without). However, the overall way in which Mantello builds tension from the most basic of theatrical elements — two actors communicating and living in the moment — is particularly breathtaking.

By the time the play ends, Daniels and Williams look as though they've been run over by a bulldozer. As the audience files out of the theater, we realize we feel the same. This is one unforgettable night at the theater.