Closer to the Edge

I’ve only been to the Silver Spring Stage twice and once was a very long time ago, but its production of Blackbird by contemporary Scottish playwright David Harrower last month caught my interest. The show impressed me, and in spite of a gentleman snoring in the row behind me (how in the world could anyone sleep through such a gripping story?), the rest of the audience appeared captured by the performance. The show certainly wasn’t perfect (when is live theater ever perfect?), but impressive enough that I am interested in seeing more. This theater’s following appears to really appreciate edgy material, as do I, and it’s worth going out of my neighborhood to find it. My review follows. (I cut the last paragraph since the show has closed.)

Broken Wings at Silver Spring Stage

Staging an intense contemporary drama about child molestation poses considerable hazards for a community theater. The harsh subject matter demands that the cast, director, and audience tackle disturbing topics head on. In a very small cast, the actors must stretch their memories and concentration skills well beyond the usual.

Silver Spring Stage bravely confronts enormous challenges in its rendition of Scottish playwright David Harrower’s Blackbird, directed by Craig Allen Mummey. The play, which premiered in Scotland in 2005, runs without intermissions through the end of January.

Blackbird is intended to be uncomfortable to watch. The language is so coarse at times that even the actors seem uneasy. But the audience finds its rewards as Mummey competently guides his cast through a series of stark transitions that probe the boundaries between passion and perversion and love and hate. Although his blocking may be a little obvious in spots, the physical scenes work well enough.

Harrower’s tale is a hypothetical reckoning between Una (a disturbed young woman played by Lenora Spahn) and Ray (her childhood molester played by Ted Culler). The plays opens when Una abruptly appears at Ray’s workplace fifteen years after the crime. He is out of prison and building a new life. She has never healed.  The script is noticeably more powerful than the Silver Spring Stage production of Blackbird, but it is always gratifying to see a community theater reach.

Spahn steps up to create many of the play’s best moments. Una appears as rigidly fractured as the half-completed sentences and raw language that make her dialogue darkly poetic. Harrower leaves it to the audience to decide whether it was the molestation and Ray’s abandonment or enduring the aftermath, which she describes in brutal detail, that has broken her.

Culler is less believable as Ray. Shocked to find the 27-year-old Una confronting him when he planned never to see her again, Ray ushers her into the deserted lunchroom where overflowing trashcans symbolize the messes people make of their lives. Perhaps because Culler looks older than his character and reminds one of an upstanding high school principal, or perhaps because Ray and Una make too little eye contact, the expected sexual tension doesn’t build as the pair retrace the events that led to their disastrous “affair.” 

Ray protests that he is not a serial pedophile, that he had inappropriately but sincerely loved the 12-year-old Una, and that he has found redemption. She vacillates between wanting to hurt Ray and trying to rekindle their relationship. “Am I too old?” she snipes.


Both actors do an admirable job of handling so many lines. If they give the impression of acting more at than with each other at times, and if the occasional comic relief falls flat due to inconsistent timing, Spahn and Culler still manage to keep their audience focused. Culler’s greatest strength lies in his reactions and audience members will learn the most about Ray by watching those closely.

The script is based loosely on the true story of Toby Studebaker, a middle-aged U.S. Marine who seduced a prepubescent British girl over the Internet and disappeared with her for five days in the summer of 2003. Jailed for child molestation and related charges first in Britain and again in the United States, Studebaker is credited with prodding Scotland to outlaw the internet grooming of children.
 

Commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005, Blackbird received the 2006 Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland for Best New Play and the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play.

The production crew includes Mummey as Set Designer, Chris Curtis as Lighting Designer, Kevin Garrett as Sound Designer, and Brian Dettling as Combat Consultant. Stage Manager Laura Rogers appears onstage briefly as Girl in the surprise ending.