Fred Wemyss

I hopped on the train from Huntington yesterday, got out at the last stop, Penn Station and went to 55th Street, home of the Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center. At the box office I bought a ticket for that evening's performance of a play which is still in previews, BLACKBIRD. I went because I wanted to see Jeff Daniels on stage. The play (which has an author whose name I can't remember) is about a sixty-year-old man being confronted by a young woman he sexually abused, years earlier, when she was twelve. It is a well-focused play. Mart Crowley, who wrote BOYS IN THE BAND, wrote a similar one thirty or so years ago, the title of which I can't recall, about a young man confronting the priest who abused him when he was a child. It's in a collection of Crowley's plays. I've not seen that one performed, but it strikes me that Crowley's take on the theme is unironic, and, therefore, perhaps, more powerful than BLACKBIRD, if only because the Crowley play seems to be mournful and BLACKBIRD is, essentially, ironic.
The actress playing the woman confronting her abuser is excellent in the role. She is waiflike well into adulthood. Jeff Daniels, of course, plays the more interesting role. He is cast well because almost any other actor would come across as a monster. Another actor could play this very well, but Jeff Daniels removes the freak factor, somehow.
Crowley's play was deeper. It indicted history, the church, society and the powewrful in general. BLACKBIRD may be more realistic. The two characters are truly postmodern, subject to their own sentiments, whereas, in the other play, the priest feels the pull of his calling and the young man marches with the strength of what was a new phenomenon then called Gay Lib. In BLACKBIRD, clinical detail heightens the reality. But Crowley's play has an apocalyptic feel. In fact, it is a more felt play.
But BLACKBIRD moves briskly. The set, showing the hallways and breakroom of an office-building of the wall-to-wall-carpeted, charcoal gray and chrome sort, reflects the anonymity of the two characters. Indeed, the predator has changed his name and the victim, although speaking her name to another character who appears fleetingly, considers herself "a ghost."
Opening night is less than a week from now, I think. One thing might need working out. I'm not certain the slow fading of the ceiling lights during the monologues of the protagonists helped. The lights are glaring for the rest of the play and I think the revelatory speeches would play better if the light stayed harsh.
Jeff Daniels sold me on this play. It was what I expected it to be. It has an important subject.
But it lacks the anger which made its equivalent from three decades ago profound.