Plays have long been the way artists express their concerns with the difficulties of being human. City Theatre's "Blackbird" is one such example. While as imperfect as its troubled characters, this play involves the audience in surprisingly intimate ways by putting a human, often sympathetic face on one of life's most uncomfortable realities -- pedophilia.

And, by staging it in a commonplace setting, the messy lunchroom of a business, playwright David Harrower emphasizes the ordinariness that cloaks this crime against children. Set designer Tony Ferrieri shows he has no illusions about employee "amenities."

Ray seems just another white-collar worker with his shirt, tie and chino pants uniform and cell-phone holster.

Una is an unremarkable young woman in a cheap dress and tacky boots.

Behind their bland facades, there's an outrage that continues to seethe and scald their lives. Una was 12 when Ray, 40, took her to a cheap tourist home and raped her twice.

Rape is the only word for what he did, even though Una made no objection, but being 12 is objection enough. He turned himself in and went to jail; she was damaged psychically beyond knowing.

Fifteen years later, Una confronts Ray at his workplace, and soon, the layers come off. Of course, their reunion is awkward at first, but Harrower draws out this uncomfortable sense a bit too long.

Point Park University graduate Robin Abramson is a nervous, tentative Una who shows up at Ray's office unannounced. It's an audacious, if not brave gesture to confront him after 15 years of silence.

Abramson plays the first moments of the meeting too close to the brink of hysteria (there'll be plenty of that later) until she grows into the part as the play progresses.

Steve Pickering, a Chicago-based actor, fills out his Ray uniform easily from the start, but both are hampered by Harrower's clumsy, Mamet-like snatches of unfinished sentences in the early going.

A lot of emotion is released eventually, threatening to flood this one-act drama. Pickering keeps it all together as his character gradually understands what he needs to do.

What raises "Blackbird" above the melodramatic is Harrower's adept way of returning Una and Ray to their lives 15 years ago as they relive those moments that, for an instant, seemed sweet and loving. We almost fall for it, but like the older Ray, we snap back to reality.

Something else happens in "Blackbird" that raises a disturbing ambiguity, but I'll let future audiences discover that for themselves.

Directed by Stuart Carden, former associate artistic director at City Theatre, "Blackbird" personalizes child sex abuse in its many miserable dimensions in a new, grim way.

You have been warned.

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