During a scene late in Blackbird, Froggy, who shares an apartment with Baylis, finds one of Baylis' short stories. Froggy, in her sweet, always amazed, slangy voice says it's pornographic, and Baylis, in his experienced, gruff tone, replies that it's also an intimate love story. Such a description is apt for writer Adam Rapp's own play as well.
Blackbird can be startling in an explicit way, with its display of swearing, defecating, drug use, nudity, and especially in its harsh depiction of its all-around troubled characters. You could say this is its pornographic side, but the swearing is actually used as a term of endearment, and the salvation the two find in each other, albeit more melancholy than sweet, is the intimacy/love side.
By setting the story on Christmas Eve, Rapp really rubs their troubles in, and by having the periodic tapping of a blackbird at their apartment window -- besides further irritating their already cracked state -- keeps reminding us, and them, of the world outside their apartment (presumably more pleasant) and by doing so, reveals a resentment in Baylis for birds because they are free to fly where they please -- whereas he, and Froggy, are too obviously wounded and burdened by their pasts (Baylis a Gulf War vet, ex-husband, and like Froggy -- who suffered a painful, jerry-executed, abortion - a drug addict) to consider such things, let alone do them (although Baylis does buy Froggy a bus ticket home, which is never used, at the end of the play).
Darrell W. Cox and Lindsay Gould, as Baylis and Froggy, work well as a pair. The nuance of their performances comes less from contrivance than from an emotional investment in, and a feeling for, their characters—and all the emotions and gradations that two dilapidated junkies, half in the grave, half in love, implies.
Although the story and dramaturgy may not be original, Blackbird's quality and humanity, along with its powerful performances, make it feel fresh and make it memorable.
