Blackbird

"An immensely powerful work that only occasionally maximizes its potential in the fitful production...Williams’ Una starts off both hopping mad and, it would seem, certifiably mad...This interpretation also begins the production at a fever pitch that can only sweat itself out...Mr. Daniels, as good as he is, is forced to emote up to Ms. Williams’ level. When the production reaches its climax, it’s anticlimactic; Daniels and Williams have already been there, done that, and so have we." Full Review

"What [Williams] pulls off in David Harrower’s 2005 drama is shattering...Their encounter takes unexpected turns and the language is disturbingly frank. By play’s end, 80 minutes later, both actors look drained. You’ll be shocked, yet strangely elated — the sign of powerful theater." Full Review

"It was Mantello’s choice to go big with the emotions in this first scene, which heightens the drama but also pitches the passion so high that the actors can only take it up… and up… to the edge of hysteria...It’s still unnerving to watch. Too unnerving, actually, because by this time, both performances, fiercely committed and complicated as they are, have gone way over the top. But even at this high decibel level, the disturbing substance of the play makes it riveting." Full Review

"It seems inappropriate, and perhaps disrespectful, to praise the play and director Joe Mantello's production with the usually enthusiastic accolades a reviewer would bestow upon such an expertly achieved eighty minutes of theatre...In varying degrees, Williams and Daniels, both excellent, effectively confront the audience to feel sympathy for their characters as it becomes increasingly clear what their emotions are for each other." Full Review

"So complicates the questions of consent and trauma and recovery—and even love—that it would be difficult to look at any of these subjects the same way again...It’s hard to think of another director besides Mantello who could so confidently package so much unprettied trauma within the big-box conventions of Broadway. He makes the experience of empathy both horrific and exhilarating...The theater at its best as in 'Blackbird' is one place where it is not only necessary but awesome to be awful." Full Review

"'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...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, we realize we feel the same. This is one unforgettable night at the theater." Full Review

"Watching Williams work is like seeing a figure from a documentary perform a fictional reënactment of her own life. She shifts between the two realities—what’s true in the world and what’s true onstage—without ever losing sight of her partner...The director, Mantello has a weakness for emphasizing the issues in 'issue plays'...Fortunately for us, Williams’s performance goes beyond his rather limited purview, but Daniels’s doesn’t." Full Review

"High-octane, provocative, brutally-lacerating drama is back on Broadway with David Harrower's 'Blackbird.' Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams give frenzied, uncompromising performances as a pair of irremediably-ruined souls frozen by a bubbling mix of guilt, retribution, revenge and what seem to be dangerous crosscurrents of desire... It is a dynamite play in a dynamite production with dynamite performances." Full Review

"'Blackbird' is a comfortless 80-minute reckoning of arrested time and soiled innocence...Plot and morals are beside the point; the slow drip of memory like acid on the present is what Harrower is after...Joe Mantello reimagines his exactingly sharp 2007 staging...Time has been shattered for these walking ghosts, and we are transfixed watching them cut their hands, sifting through the shards." Full Review

"Nine years on from its New York premiere, Harrower's script has lost none of its provocative power, its ability to leave deep and lasting wounds...Nearly a decade older, Daniels is even more at home inside Ray's dispirited, shriveled soul than before...Williams is a nervy technician who builds her performance on a series of effects that a lesser actress might not be able to pull off...'Blackbird' seems to me a modern expression of tragedy." Full Review

"There are no weapons on display here – no knives, no guns, no stage blood – but this is the most lacerating play on Broadway this season. It leaves marks – on the audience, who may find some moments almost unbearably painful to watch, and on the actors too, who appeared drained and devastated at the curtain call. Despite the evocations of the title, in this 'Blackbird,' no one gets to be free." Full Review

"It’s a disturbing set-up, but my shock is reserved for the free pass that so many have been giving to a revival that feels like little more than a star-driven exercise in showy acting and goosed-up dramatic tension...The revival of 'Blackbird' feels neither articulate nor authentic...Daniels and Williams have a long track record of impressive performances, and Mantello is one of our premiere theater directors. It’s safe to say that “Blackbird” doesn’t represent their best work." Full Review

"Harrower's writing has its studied aspects, from the clipped, nervously evasive dialogue of the early exchanges to the tidy juxtaposition of the monologues that strip both characters bare. But Mantello and his remarkable actors give this slow-burning, real-time drama fluidity and searing emotional heat. Chipping away at our preconceptions while forcing Ray and Una into inescapable corners of darkest self-knowledge, the play packs a visceral punch." Full Review

"A pruriently manipulative tale of pedophilia...It’s a have-it-both-ways shocker that seeks to make us sympathize (but not really!) with a man who molested a 12-year-old girl, did time for it, put his life back together, and now finds himself facing the prospect of having his cover blown when the girl shows up at his office 15 years after the fact, locked and loaded. Great acting, great staging, but 'Blackbird' still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth." Full Review

"It is a lean and muscular piece of drama, where two emotionally damaged characters with a terrible past are brought together for an uncomfortable reunion that is sure to end in further disaster and trauma. Mantello once again shows how he can draw out fully-developed performances from great actors that are both believable and richly detailed. The interplay between Daniels and Williams could not be rawer or more dramatically charged." Full Review

"With the production of David Harrower's 'Blackbird,' both the victim and her victimizer would be doing everyone, and the cause, a favor by shutting up and flying away...This Joe Mantello mounting of the play remains one of the most painfully overwrought of anything I've ever seen...There's nothing inherently wrong with a premise this thin, but it can't stay thin, let alone be directed and acted that way...The entire thing comes across as a gigantic gag." Full Review

"This drama—which I regard as one of the best pieces of writing of the last decade—offers the uncompromising actress Williams the rare opportunity to contort body and soul into a character...Not a moment feels inauthentic or not rooted in something deeply true...What's missing in [Daniels'] work is, in fact, the requisite superficial attractiveness of his guy...These two performances don't always fully jell as a single entity." Full Review

"The play itself isn’t quite as successful. It takes time to settle into believable rhythms. Initial staccato bursts of words still sound stage-y. Dimming lights during monologues adds a non-realistic texture the play doesn’t need. The litter-strewn room echoing messy lives feels a bit too heavy-handed. Still, 'Blackbird' is taut, twisty and provocative. There’s value in works that make your mind fly to uncomfortable places and send out cries you can’t unhear." Full Review

"Their rapture is murderous. They want to annihilate each other. This is the electrifying production that this season’s revival of Sam Shepard’s 'Fool For Love' aspired to be, also about a couple reuniting as they inch toward a death’s grip of horrifying power and sadness. Daniels and Williams are so devastatingly into David Harrower’s stem-winding tale of an illicit conjugation, that by the time the lights came up I felt as spent as the actors themselves appeared to be." Full Review

"'Blackbird,' directed with intense force by Joe Mantello, grabs hold of us and does not give us a chance to get out of this without some squirming in our seats...We would like to see the simplicity here, so we can be more comfortable, but thankfully, Harrower has no intention for comfort...This is not a play to go into lightly, but I applaud the bravery of all involved. It is upsetting, disturbing, and doesn’t allow us to make easy judgments." Full Review

"There's nothing been there/done that about this revival...Michelle Williams is a worthy partner for Daniels. Her Una is a more immediately aggressive, still wounded victim of her preteen sexualization than I recall Pill to have been. This has also made Daniels make Ray come across a harder, tougher and yet more nervous opponent in this cat-and-mouse game...Even if you knew what that twisty ending was all about, you'd still leave pondering the whys and wherefores of Una and Ray's relationship." Full Review

"Now 'Blackbird' has arrived at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre again directed by Mantello with Daniels but partnered by Michelle Williams in this two hander. Unaccountably, Mantello has chosen to stage the play differently this time. The new rhythms of the play undermine it somewhat. What was once a steadily rising action is now a series of fits and starts." Full Review

"Harrower carefully calibrates his 90-minute drama, which takes place in real time. About every 10 minutes, he shifts the ground under these two characters’ very unstable footing...Williams means to give a big, bravura performance that starts at a white-hot pitch and descends into near madness...Her performance as Una is mannered to the point of distraction. The result is an imbalance in performances that seriously undermines the drama between an unrepentant offender and his lost victim." Full Review

"Harrowing — and absolutely brilliant — revival of 'Blackbird'...David Harrower's play is so intimate and emotional and charged that it makes 'Eclipsed' seem like a comedy. It's also impossible to stop watching because both characters are fully realized and equally sympathetic...While the play's topic might initially put some off, this cast makes the spare and human dialogue soar. These are two actors at the top of their game, holding back nothing." Full Review

"Jeff Daniels brings new comprehension and maturity to the role...In testament to David Harrower’s insightful writing, judgment about the immoral coupling doesn’t prevent one’s sympathy for the man. Daniels appears whole and credible. Michelle Williams, however, does not...Without equal push-pull, the piece cannot be successful...Director Joe Mantello, whose talents I have always appreciated, seems to have achieved only half of what he set out to do. " Full Review