Blackbird

"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

"One of the most potent and fierce dramas of the season…This two-person drama wallops Broadway with brute force…No moment is wasted in getting to know these characters from start to finish…These actors never run into scene trouble in this tour de force of a play. They let the masterful language by playwright David Harrower take them where the play says they must go…I was glued by moment one...Run to see this play that is enormously brave and masterfully produced." 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Harrower and director Joe Mantello have crafted a gripping, tense drama unfolding in real time that doesn’t indulge any wasted moments. They let the actors and the dialogue do all the heavy lifting and they do so without judgment, leaving the audience to decide if they are sickened, moved, saddened or all of the above...'Blackbird' is a gripping portrait of a taboo love story done with unflinching honesty that is brutal and unforgettable." Full Review

"Daniels has graduated to brilliant in the Broadway premiere at the Belasco. Here he shares the stage with the intensely captivating Michelle Williams, in a production by Mantello that perfectly calibrates the volatile sexual chemistry of the leads...They fight to a draw, leaving us even more disturbed by a play that unsettles us not by telling us what to think but by provoking within us feelings that are impossible to reconcile." 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

"'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

"'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

"Harrowing drama...Whatever doubts I had about Jeff Daniels’ return to a character he played Off-Broadway, this riveting, visceral, uncompromising revival makes misgivings irrelevant. Again directed by the peerless Joe Mantello and now co-starring the extraordinary Michelle Williams, the drama feels more psychologically profound than what had earlier seemed an admirably austere but stagy 80-minute answer to the voyeuristic question raised by such wildly unseemly couplings." Full Review

"Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams leave it all on the floor in this wrenching two-hander…Director Joe Mantello and Jeff Daniels first tackled this play nine years ago, and they are back again alongside Michelle Williams, who matches their intensity with a performance that leaves you worried for her mental health...'Blackbird' is not exactly the kind of play you 'enjoy,' but with this production, it is theatre at its purest, as classic in its own way as those famous Greek tragedies." Full Review

"Joe Mantello has delivered a top-notch revival...Williams effectively comes off haunted and shattered, going to dark places in a sensational performance, especially in her climactic monologue, and Daniels is expectedly good as the offender who never expected this situation to come back in his face, let alone with this agenda. Throughout, I didn’t hear one cell phone ring—or even a cough—a testament to 'Blackbird’s' power." Full Review

"'Blackbird' is intense. David Harrower's two-hander packs a lot of history and angst into the knock-down, drag-out war that makes up the 90-minute play...It's not fun. It absolutely will make you uncomfortable—how could it not? (Director Joe Mantello is sensitive and careful not to sensationalize the action.) Yet it's unfortunately relevant today...It's sad. It's infuriating. It will leave you shaken." Full Review

"A very excellent drama about one of today’s social themes that is only getting more press than maybe we’d like. This 80 minute, intermissionless play by David Harrower is brilliantly performed by Williams and Daniels and certainly will be in the running when the award season starts up...Serious theatergoers: Don’t miss this superb play and two over-the-top performances." 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

"'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

"Refreshing and instructive. It's also, mind you, as stinging and squirm-inducing as any presidential debate, while offering more intelligence, sophistication and compassion...Williams brings more of that slow-burning, nervous intensity to Una...Daniels' performance, which was superb nine years ago, is better here — at once more vital and more aching in its weariness, and still beautifully shaded...The play, which ends with a piercing twist, also seems to resonate with more force." Full Review

"Director Joe Mantello keeps the show uncomfortable. The power dynamic between Una and Ray constantly shifts, as they stalk through the small conference room like caged animals, their claws bared. These are two people who can only be understood by each other — their relationship is complex and sometimes horrifying. But Williams and Daniels help us believe that these two distressed individuals are real and that we should care about both of them." 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

"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