Echoes of Lolita in Harrower’s play

Mephisto bring their production of David Harrower’s controversial play Blackbird to Cork Arts Theatre next week. The play was also a hit at last year’s Galway Theatre Festival.

Upon its debut in 2006, Blackbird won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play, beating Frost/Nixon. It centres on a fraught meeting between a middle-aged man and a young woman who, 15 years earlier, had a criminal sexual relationship: the girl was then aged 12. The man, Ray (Ian Watt), was imprisoned once the affair came to life. Having built a new life upon his release, he is shocked when the girl, Una (Emma O’Grady), now an adult, shows up at his place of work, to resolve matters between them.

“The play doesn’t set up a black-and-white scenario for the audience,” says director, Mark Westbrook. “You come with your ideas about right and wrong and you have them slightly disturbed. And it’s hard for people not to be affected by it, one way or another. But you have to see beyond the issue to the much more human level of it. I think that’s what appeals to the audience. There’s a human story going on here, regardless of crimes committed, or right and wrong.”