“Blackbird” sings

CAN we talk a bit about Jeff Daniels? I just had the privilege of catching him in a very powerful two-person play last night called “Blackbird”. Written by David Harrower, a playwright better known in London (this was his New York debut), it is the story of a man and a woman who meet to talk about an affair that took place 15 years earlier, when he was 40 and she was 12. Set in an anodyne office space, the play runs through without intermission, ensuring the drama never hits a speed bump. Their unfolding revelations and competing perceptions remain gripping throughout–a rare feat for such a minimalist play.

Allison Pill puts in a strong performance as a woman made frail by time, maddened by the ways she has tried to make sense of her past. There are moments when she shakes like a leaf, teetering on awkwardly tawdry heels, as though she’s an over-grown child in her mother’s clothes. But then, now and then, something snaps and she yells, she breaks, she slams a door–all, seemingly, to keep from whimpering.

But this is Jeff Daniels’s show. Slumped over, Willy Loman-like in his cheap office clothes, he is a husky man bent by time. There is an everyman quality to Mr Daniels that has sometimes served him well, landing him parts in which he seems endearingly befuddled by life’s lottery. But often it keeps him underestimated and out of the spotlight. In his first play in New York since 1993 (he runs a theatre in Michigan), he is an awkward, shambling, stammering, poignant gift to the stage. His pain is there, but also his power, his magnetism.

“Blackbird” is only running through June 3rd. Try to catch it.