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.
It turns out there is a place more uncomfortable to be on Broadway than a bullet-ridden hut watching sex slaves try to preserve their humanity. That would be among the audience watching the harrowing -- and absolutely brilliant -- revival of 'Blackbird'...Michelle Williams plays the spiky, vengeful and still-broken victim, and Jeff Daniels is the stressed-out, humiliated one-time aggressor. With this indisputably superb cast, the play ducks and weaves enough to take your breath away under Joe Mantello's taut direction.
Williams is venomous, fragile and, finally, stripped bare as she narrates a spellbinding account of Una's last encounter with Ray, at a beach-side hotel in a town far away enough from where they both lived that they wouldn't be recognized...In [Daniels] hands, it's apparent Ray knows what he did was wrong, but also clear that he doesn't believe he was one of 'them' -- the kind of man who belongs on a sex-offender registry...After Una tells Ray her father died some years back, Ray moves to comfort her, touching her back in the warm way a friend might. The way Williams reacts feels pointedly truthful. Joe Mantello's direction is as taut as in 'The Humans'...I'm genuinely surprised a piece of this intense nature has made it to Broadway. 'Blackbird' is a small gem, here in the hands of two gifted actors.
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