The Triumphant Return of Blackbird Flynt
by Peter Ullian

In 1986, a band of would-be revolutionaries, made up of a cross-generational amalgam of burned-out sixties radicals and angry punk anarchists, await the return of their leader, Blackbird Flynt, following a failed bank robbery.“Cleveland Public Theatre appears to have uncorked a real talent: Peter Ullian … Ullian demonstrates he has three things every good playwright needs — a flair for language, a sense of the theatrical and a willingness to take on important questions.

The question this plays asks is, ‘What do you do when the revolution is over?’ Or, to put it another way, ‘How can you be a hero and a failure?’ There isn’t any real answer … But along the way, there’s a lot of provocative and witty stuff.

Ullian gives us a nervous gang of four, all that remain of ‘The Movement’ after a disastrous attempt to rob a bank, waiting in their bunker headquarters for their charismatic leader, Blackbird Flynt … Ullian borrows widely from everywhere for the play — gangster movies, Sam Shepard, all kinds of familiar cultural icons.

But the mix is his own brand of desperate comedy, a little indisciplined, but arresting … the talent is unmistakable.”

—Marianne Evett, The Plain Dealer