Bad Breakups

Una and Ray haven't seen each other in fifteen years, not since the end of the affair. He's now a wary and wounded middle-aged man with a new life in a new town, and Una is, um, in her mid-twenties. Yes, that means she was twelve when their "relationship" ended. As vile as that appears — and it is more than an appearance, to be sure — playwright David Harrower hews a more complex course in his play Blackbird than merely adjudging one a victim and one a predator. People are more complicated than that, and love, or what we think is love, can be a nasty, confusing business. The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents the Olivier-award winning Blackbird at 8 p.m. Wednesday, January 21, in the Emerson Studio Theatre at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road, Webster Groves; 314-968-4925 or www.repstl.org). Blackbird continues every day except Monday through Sunday, February 8, and tickets are $34 to $52.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: Jan. 21. Continues through Feb. 8, 2009