Dakota Wolf and Ron Hastings deliver powerhouse performances as a 20something woman and the decades-older man who had sex with her when she was only 12 in David Harrower’s Blackbird, a harrowing, disturbing, utterly compelling guest production at Anaheim’s Chance Theater.

Our first glimpse of Una and Peter finds them mid-conversation in the trash-strewn break room of an unnamed company, and though we’re at first unaware of the reason for their confrontation, one thing is crystal clear from the get-go.

Peter wants out and Una is not about to let him get away, or at least not until he hears her story as she remembers it, which is, perhaps not surprisingly, markedly different from Peter’s memories of events that took place fifteen years before.

As for the details of Peter’s current life or Una’s, we simply have to take their word on it, and do so with a grain of salt, since the potential for prevarication, intentional or not, is very real indeed.

All of this adds up to a play that is far too multi-layered for clichés, and anyone expecting a black-and-white predator-victim revenge tale will have to search elsewhere.

Is Peter the serial molester that news articles likely painted him as, or was Una (as he insists) only a one-time thing? Is he being honest about the man he claims to have become, or merely describing a life he wants her to see him in? Is Una a grown-up abuse survivor simply looking for closure, or does her visit hide more sinister motives?

Be prepared to hash over these questions with your fellow playgoers in a post-show talkback that more than merits an extra half-hour of your time.

Director Christa Havenhill has made the savvy decision to set Blackbird in 2005, the year it debuted at the Edinburgh International Festival, before the #metoo movement and social media reshaped the way we respond to allegations of sexual abuse, though no matter what decade it were to take place in, the characters Harrower has created would defy easy characterization.

All of this gives dynamic Chance favorite Hastings and gifted stage neophyte Wolf plenty to sink their teeth into in a pair of performances guaranteed to hold audiences riveted, and perhaps even a bit torn about just whose side they are on at any given moment.

Following a series of memorable musical star turns at the Chance and IVRT, Hastings proves himself equally gifted at bringing to complex, conflicted, non-singing life a man whose attempts to justify the indefensible fall on deaf ears.

Wolf matches her more seasoned scene partner every step of the way as a woman whose obvious relish in finally having the upper hand is tempered by a decade-and-a-half of pain and shame and acting out.

C&R Productions have done a bang-up job of transforming the set Christopher Scott Murillo designed for the recently closed Alma into Blackbird’s drab, grey, clutter-filled break room, one that Eleanor Hastings lights to stark, stunning effect in addition to her spare but effective sound design.

Leah Zimmerman is assistant director. Catherine Last alternates with her sister Elizabeth in a startling eleventh-hour cameo.

Having been blown away by Blackbird’s 2011 Los Angeles Premiere, I jumped at the chance to revisit it thirteen years later in a visiting production more than holds its own against Chance Theater’s regularly scheduled best.

Chance Theater, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills.
www.chancetheater.com

–Steven Stanley
June 15, 2024

Tags: Chance Theater, David Harrower, Orange County Theater Review