The auditorium at Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo's Sangengaya district was filled with the mostly female fans of actor Masaaki Uchino, patiently waiting for the play "Blackbird" by David Harrower to begin. The taunt and provocative drama that subsequently unfolded no doubt caught some of them by surprise.
Director Tamiya Kuriyama, former head of the New National Theatre in Tokyo, saw the original staging of "Blackbird" at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival. That production moved to London and later won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, the industry's most prestigious new-writing prize. Since then, it has been performed in the U.S., Spain and India before making its Japanese debut this month in Tokyo, after which it will tour to Nagoya, Kita-Kyushu, Osaka and Toyama.
On paper the story sounds like a familiar melodrama lifted from the tabloids. In a factory locker room, a young woman meets an older man who abused her 15 years ago. But what is so clever and radical about Harrower's approach is how he subverts expectations of revenge and retribution to explore instead the characters' mutual emotional dependency, right up to a shocking ending.