Over the years the Edinburgh international festival has not had much luck with new plays. The curse has, however, been lifted with David Harrower's Blackbird: a riveting study in sexual obsession that leaves one both shaken and stirred.
It deals with a confrontation between 28-year-old Una and 56-year-old Ray in a debris-filled factory recreation room. Fifteen years ago they had a relationship for which Ray was sent down. Now Una has come in search of him. The shock lies in discovering that Una is not after revenge but some sort of closure to a relationship that ended tantalisingly in a Tynemouth hotel when Ray went out for a packet of cigarettes and never returned.
Harrower doesn't exculpate Ray but he asks difficult questions. Can one separate love from paedophilia? Is consensual sex possible with a minor? Should we recognise that children now reach sexual maturity much earlier? Harrower can't provide all the answers. He also never makes clear how much Una's adult life has been ruined by her early experiences. He does, however, suggest that there may be a strange affinity, tantamount to love, between people of different generations and that adult guilt and childhood innocence should never be automatically assumed.
If the piece shocks and disturbs, it is partly because of the visceral force of Peter Stein's masterly production. Jodhi May is perhaps a little too patently the sexual aggressor but brilliantly re-enacts the nightmare moment of her desertion. Roger Allam is extraordinary in suggesting the shame, fear and lingering desire of a middle-aged man who has earnestly tried to reinvent himself. Ferdinand Wögerbauer's set, with its Perspex window through which passing factory-hands intrusively peer, reminds us of our own voyeuristic fascination with transgressive sex. I can't believe Harrower's harrowing play will disappear after only nine Edinburgh performances.
· Until August 24. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
