Review By Tom Mcelfresh

Photo By Sandy Underwood

Raye Lankford and Dan McCabe in Dead Eye Boy.

Once milk has been spilt, three choices present themselves. You can cry over it. You can fix blame and dispense punishment. Or you can try your god-damndest to clean it up.

Once a life has been spoilt, you face the same three harrowing choices as do the three beautifully drawn, powerfully played characters of The Dead Eye Boy, now showing in its world premiere at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Angus MacLachlan's chilling, naturalistic drama was chosen by Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Edward Stern as recipient of the 12th annual Rosenthal New Play Award.

And winner it is, though, in the manner of naturalist theater, it is somewhat removed and clinical to the touch, despite its confrontational content. (Because of graphic sexual situations and extreme verbal and physical violence, only persons 18 or older will be admitted.)

Shirley-Diane (Raye Lankford) was raped and impregnated at 14. She elected to bear the child, a boy she named Soren. The boy (played in his early teens by Dan McCabe) was physically and mentally damaged in the womb by his mother's severe drug addiction. Whether she keeps the boy to love or to supply a handy object for her rage, or both, or for a web of complex reasons is the pole about which MacLachlan's cinematic script revolves. Now, at 30, Shirley is temporarily clean, but very fragile and angry. With ferocious intensity she meets and mates with Billy (Kyle Fabel), another recovering addict who is an ex-convict. Together, maimed but hopeful, man, woman and child set off down a spiral of promise, anger, stress, doubt, mess, spilled milk and abusive recrimination.

Spilled milk and duct tape supply metaphoric glue. The people keep screwing up. Their lives shatter. Shirley-Diane feels trapped in the parenthood she chose and in a mindless, dead-end job. She avenges herself on the person closest to hand, Soren. Billy tries to grow beyond his criminal past and his current menial factory job. He gets himself snared in a sales scam for which he has no aptitude and winds up unemployed, angered, scared and teetering on the edge of violence. Through all of that, however, he retains a vestige of native gentleness. Traumatized, Soren lashes out in frenzy and invites violence in return. Predictably, he gravitates toward evil friends and overly easy chemical solutions.

For a while at least, the three of them keep trying to tape themselves, and each other, back together. But the messes they make grow larger. The violence escalates in ways that can't be revealed here out of deference to future audiences. And the roll of silver duct tape that keeps appearing in scene after scene turns sinister.

Charles Towers, now in his third season as the Playhouse's associate artistic director, directed the piece with a clean, controlled fury that matches MacLachlan's words but is made less relentless by scene change blackouts. Drew Fracher assisted, staging realistic fight sequences that threaten to erupt off the tiny Shelterhouse Theater stage. Nancy Schertler's lighting has the stark angularity of a surgery, plunging down into Karen TenEyck's minimalist, black-walled settings. The lighting is merciless but has the drawback of turning eyes into black holes.

Lankford goes well beyond her work in How I Learned to Drive last season. She takes Shirley-Diane first to the edge of frenzy and then beyond, into the stony cold. McCabe, debuting at the Playhouse, sews up young Soren inside a sack of misery as certainly as he tapes up plastic toys inside a bag and attacks them with a hammer. Fabel, also debuting at the Playhouse, reveals the full depth of Billy's wrath and frustration, demanding empathy as he peels away layer after layer of pain and until a core of caring as real as his wrath emerges.

It's interesting that two plays which descend from the same naturalist tradition for portrayals of poverty, misery and sordidness should be on view at the Playhouse simultaneously, this and Martin McDonagh's Tony-winning Beauty Queen of Leenane. Had Ed Stern faced a choice between the two for the Rosenthal Prize, I suspect he would have chosen Dead Eye Boy. It's a worthier piece of writing.

E-mail the editor

Mother McMaggot (March 9, 2000)
The Sound of Silence (February 17, 2000)
Missed Boats (January 27, 2000)

personals | cover | listings | humor | news | movies | music | arts & entertainment | dining | classifieds | mediakit | home

Restart
DTC steps back, reassesses and announces a new season using CCM talent

Antique Heaven
Variety is the spice of furniture design, as demonstrated by show at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Finishing the Month...Artistically
Galleries at the Pendleton and on Main Street open their doors for Final Fridays

Family Ties
'Long Day's Journey' a solid look at dysfunction

Caroline in the Country
Novel offers no solutions, but provides satisfaction

Arts Beat
A Supposed Drop Inn Victory

Open Arms
Local African-American theater fest offers many opportunities to learn and be entertained

Curtain Call

	Join the CityBeat Mailing List
	» JOIN NOW