Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams will return to Broadway this season to star in David Harrower's Olivier Award-winning drama BLACKBIRD. The production, to be directed by Joe Mantello.
BLACKBIRD tells the story of Una and Ray. Fifteen years earlier they had a relationship and haven't set eyes on each other since. Now she's found him again.
Shock ought to have a shelf life, the way horror movies lose their power after repeat viewings...Yet years later, there I was at the Belasco, craning forward, then recoiling, as Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams clawed at each other's psyches and bodies, playing ex-lovers or, to be precise, a pedophile and his victim...Blackbird is a comfortless 80-minute reckoning of arrested time and soiled innocence...Vocally, Williams is doing something interesting . She speaks in a halting, affected manner, as if Una has been rehearsing these speeches in her head for years, a girl trying to sound like an adult...As when he played Ray nine years ago, Daniels brilliantly rages, bargains, stonewalls and implodes...Time has been shattered for these walking ghosts, and we are transfixed watching them cut their hands, sifting through the shards.
Without in any way glamorizing the situation, Blackbird 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...Una is a victim, yes...Still, she is not so clearly innocent. As played with devastating rawness by Williams, she is alternately viperish, vengeful, sarcastic, bizarre, and desperate to reconnect...Similarly, Ray is drawn as richly and provocatively as possible, getting as far from ambient stereotypes about the pedophile personality as can reasonably be achieved...Daniels goes so deep into the man's depravity that he seems to come out the other side, in a place of honesty...Daniels...has not merely redecorated his earlier performance but done a gut job on it, starting over on deeper foundations.
2007 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
2016 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Jeff Daniels |
2016 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Michelle Williams |
2016 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | David Harrower |
2016 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Michelle Williams |
2016 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or off-Broadway) | Blackbird |
2016 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play | Jeff Daniels |
2016 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Michelle Williams |
2016 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Blackbird |
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