'Blackbird': A Taboo Topic

This could be tricky. How to write about the play "Blackbird," which opens Wednesday at Studio Theatre, without giving away all its secrets?

It isn't a murder mystery. Nothing like that. But the cast of the two-person show, by Scottish playwright David Harrower, gets antsy when talking specifics. According to Lisa Joyce, the 26-year-old New York-based actress who plays Una, it's safe to say only that the play is about a "confrontation" between two people who had an "inappropriate" relationship.

"I don't even know if you can say there was a relationship," counters Jerry Whiddon, the 60-year-old Washington theater veteran who plays Ray.

Uh, thanks, guys.

But really, do the math: A 60-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman get together to rehash a relationship that was -- What was that word again? -- inappropriate. Hmmm, let me see. She said toe-may-toe, and he said toe-mah-toe?

It shouldn't be too hard to guess the nature of the unpleasant something that is aired in "Blackbird," a play that Studio Artistic Director Joy Zinoman calls "the best play ever written -- that I've read -- about taboos, and the meaning of taboos, and how we respect taboos in our society." This, despite the fact that, according to Whiddon, "we don't find out the specifics of the relationship until almost 15, 16 pages in."

Not that the drama, which won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for best new play, is slow to build. Unlike most theater works, which tend to rise toward a climax, this one opens hot, Joyce says. "It starts off with an explosion, instead of the fuse being lit and then leading up to one." Whiddon agrees. "It starts high," he says, "and then goes even higher."

Joyce likens the clash to a debate, with the audience members serving as judges. "In a way," she says, "we're both trying to prove our case. And in the end, having an audience kind of heightens that sense of 'I need to prove that I'm the one in the right.' "

For that reason, both actors expect people to leave the theater arguing about whether Una or Ray is the injured party. "I certainly hope so," Whiddon says, adding that both he and Joyce think that the play scrupulously avoids taking a moral stance on their characters' behavior, other than by presenting what Whiddon calls "an innate, primal understanding of right and wrong."

It's not 'To Catch a Predator,' " Joyce says, referring to the TV news show in which hidden cameras record suspected pedophiles.

Oops. Might have let the "Blackbird" out of the bag there.

Sounds like an evening for those who like their theater strong, dark and caffeinated. Directed by David Muse for Studio's Milton Theatre, the show is the first production in the Milton Series, a program of three works billed as focusing on "a face-to-face encounter between actor and audience." "Stoop Stories," by Dael Orlandersmith and Joan Didion's adaptation of her memoir "The Year of Magical Thinking" round out the series.

According to Zinoman, the common thread among all three plays is an emphasis on knock-your-socks-off acting -- a Studio staple -- and heightened, even poetic language. "What we're looking for are things that the audience might get great pleasure from listening hard to," she says.

That, and subject matters that make people squirm uncomfortably in their seats?

"No," she says with a laugh, "only in this one. But there's enough squirm reaction in this one to carry over for all three of them."

Blackbird Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300. http://www.studiotheatre.org. Wednesday-Dec. 21. $41-$61.