LOS
ANGELES TIMES
February
27, 2004
THEATER
BEAT
You
don't need extraordinary powers of perception to see where "Molly
Sweeney" is headed. Brian Friel's didactic, overdetermined three-hander
announces its tragic arc from the first scene, in which saintly, sightless
Molly (Elizabeth A. Genge) recounts her father's lessons in touch, smell, and
sound.
"Trust
me, you're not missing a lot," he tells his blind daughter in a
whisky-tinged whisper.
Apparently
Molly doesn't take his word for it, as she later submits to corrective surgery
at the insistence of her enthusiast husband Frank (Dan Conroy), who for all his
voracious reading apparently overlooked any cautionary tales about the
cognitive challenges faced by the newly sighted.
Equally
blithe about the consequences of her operation is the washed-up sawbones
himself, Mr. Rice (Mark Hein), who sees it as a chance to revive his faltering
career. Of course, he's awfully sorry--if troublingly unsurprised--when his
"miracle Molly" doesn't take to sight so easily, slipping into a
"borderline country" between the real and the imaginary.
In
short, courageous Molly is a cipher, a victim--Friel's default vision of
Ireland and the Irish. In less doting hands than those of director Marianne
Savell, who lingers earnestly over every insight and equivocation, this
fatalism might be less tiring.
But
even with the fine efforts of her actors--Conroy is particularly offhanded and
inviting, and Genge's face takes on a hauntingly beatific cast as Molly
regresses--"Molly Sweeney" is a long sit. Its tidy object lessons and
thematic reiterations, rendered in knowing, often flowery monologues rather
than dramatized, make it feel like a cross between a TV movie and a classroom
lecture. Visionary it's not.
--Rob Kendt
"Molly
Sweeney," Soft Landing Productions and the Eclectic Company Tehatre at the
Eclectic Company Theatre, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., N. Hollywood.
Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. $15. (818) 508-3003. Running time: 2 hours, 15
minutes.