BlackBird - Hard hitting, haunting, outstanding.

It's in the story really. Blackbird, written by American playwright David Harrower is a haunting tale of a misunderstood, misplaced, love story between a thirteen year old girl and a forty year old man. While some are bound to grimace and say that it seems like a sickening tale of pedophilia, the script suddenly opens your eyes to a fact that you are perhaps sidestepping - what if they were in love?

Akvarious, a Mumbai based theatre troupe presented "Black Bird" at the Rangashankara, Bangalore with veterans Akarsh Khurana and Shernaz Patel playing the leads. The play is set in an office space. The sets and lighting, it has to be said, were quite brilliant and the idea of getting people to walk around outside the office gave a complete feel of the location.

Black Bird is a story that initially gets you thinking that its just a confrontation between a twenty five year old woman and an almost sixty year old man over a sexual relationship that transpired between the two when she was thirteen. The woman has returned to seek some answers,and to possibly remind the man, who is now leading a respectable life, about his past. And just when you have dismissed the play saying that you know too well what will happen next, the script hits you with a rock that shatters all your preconceptions about the subject. Nobody thinks that it is possible for a thirteen year old to be in love and more so, for a forty year old man to be in love with her. Turns out, it is possible.

There are some outstanding moments in the play that make you stand up and take notice. The girl's monologue about the evening when the man had taken her to a hotel room, made love and then disappeared, and how he did not return and she had to go looking for him all around the town makes for a hair raising experience that melts you in an instant. It takes a solid actor to be able to pull it off, and Shernaz did complete justice to it. As her character ends the monologue with - "you left me hurting, bleeding. You left me in love", the ensuing silence is a deafening applause to the brilliance of the script.

but as is true of any star crossed couple, this one too has a misunderstanding. The man did come back, much later, but she wasn't there and he panicked. and he called the police and turned himself in, and begged for them to find her, to make sure that she was okay. And she told everyone that it was her decision to go with him, that it was her idea, he was just being a good friend. The love story comes to an end, they are separated.

Twelve years later, and there they are, in his office, discussing what had happened. The woman is bold, in your face and a little too much for him to handle. But there are unresolved issues between them and another sexual meeting would have occured if not for the man's presence of mind.

The play ends with him storming out of the office, locking her in, saying that she was crazy. She screams and shouts and yells for him to come back. suddenly you are reminded of that fateful day. you feel for her loneliness, her desperation, her sorry state of affairs.

And then he returns.

Akvarious did an outstanding job with the script and the performances were one to remember. shernaz patel in particular for me was in another league. Her portrayal of the new age woman, with an attitude as sharp as a knife and yet just as vulnerable was spot on. Akarsh Khurana's performance seemed to have been inspired a little from woody allen, especially the constant touching of the face, as he matched shernaz for each step.

I guess its quite clear to you. Its a double thumbs up from me for AKVarious's production of "Black Bird". Do not miss it for the world.