| . | 10/05/2009
Eye of God
By: Eugene Paul
In a viscerally gripping production, Tim Blake Nelson’s play, Eye of God, has made its way to New York after seventeen years and three other productions in three other states across the country, two of them, Oklahoma and Illinois, under the same direction as that in New York. Lisa Devine, director, knows Eye of God like the back of her hand, which makes her “Director’s Notes” in the program abundantly strange and totally unnecessary. It’s as if she feared retribution from God for being so closely associated with a play that raises questions and hackles concerning God’s presence – or not – in American lives. With all the tempestuous evidence of ungodly behavior worldwide, it’s apt and frightening to be confronted with the dilemma in a theater, close up and to have it so vividly performed that you turn off questions about plot and story points as they come up in order to give yourself to the perverse pleasure of the reality of the performance.
Playwright Tim Blake Jones layers his scenes throughout, past and present, here and there, watchers and the watched, as his tale unfolds. A boy, Tom, (Ehad Berisha) upstage, curious, watching, as Sheriff Rogers (Richard Mawe), center, brings up the biblical question of God in young Isaac’s mind as he lies ready to be sacrificed under his father’s hand, and, seated at a coffee shop table, a young woman, waiting. It’s Kingfisher, Oklahoma, 1983. Ainsley (Valerie Redd), diffident, shy, pretty, apprehensive, is a perfect target for waitress Dorothy (Shorey Walker), nosy, excessively animated, excessively stereotypical, just right for the purposes of playwright and director as she wheedles the information that Ainsley is waiting for Jack whom she has never seen, never met. Jack is coming fresh out of prison to meet her. They’ve corresponded. Months. From an ad. And maybe Ainsley is already in love with him as we and Dorothy shake our heads awaiting a total loser. Jack (Judson Jones) arrives, big, shambling, baby faced with thinning hair, half afraid, half adoring, anxious, wary. Their romance is swift, uneasy, hopeful, full of questions unanswered. Jack has found God in prison.
A sudden scene of the boy, Tom, fleeing when cops stop him. He is shuddering, covered in blood. As an audience, we are trapped, rapt. We are impatient when the scene shifts to Jack and his parole officer, Sprague (Bernard Cummings). We want to know what happened. Slowly, the sheriff pulls bits of answers from the traumatized boy. He has witnessed a brutally gory murder. We know it is Ainsley. But, why is he covered in blood, her blood? Already we’ve conjectured that the flinty title, A sudden scene of the boy, Tom, fleeing when cops stop him. He is shuddering, covered in blood. As an audience, we are trapped, rapt. We are impatient when the scene shifts to Jack and his parole officer, Sprague (Bernard Cummings). We want to know what happened. Slowly, the sheriff pulls bits of answers from the traumatized boy. He has witnessed a brutally gory murder. We know it is Ainsley. But, why is he covered in blood, her blood? Already we’ve conjectured that the flinty title, Eye of God, has something to do with Ainsley’s false eye, the result of a childhood accident. It’s disturbing, unsettling, a false eye? In a pretty girl? Why? And does her imperfection render her a more suitable bride for a convict? Who will not tell her about his past? Who cannot abide Ainsley’s lack of belief in his God, her lack of submissiveness? Sheriff Rogers’ role as Greek Chorus, solving the grisly murder, as would-be comprehender of God’s will in bleak events, falls short in the events around him. He has no resolution to give us between the awful events in this world and God’s perfect peace.
One cannot say enough about Richard Mawe’s splendid, troubled, compassionate performance as the sheriff. He centers the play’s values. Young Ehad Berish is compelling as Tom and Valerie Reid gives Ainsley considerable breadth beyond that of a troubled girl. But it is Judson Jones who owns this play. As Jack, he is menacing innocence, replete with the character’s complexities. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. Shorey Walker does well as waitress Dorothy, Tom’s aunt and reluctant substitute parent. Bernard Cummings was also admirable as the parole officer with his own problems.
Director Devine has sustained the play’s foreboding throughout. Robin Vest’s scenic design tries to encompass all the many scenes in his oddly complicated setting with limited success. The strengths of playwright Jones’s Eye of God far outweigh the play’s problems, all readily fixable. Once polished, the play is Broadway material.
Kirk Theater, Theater Row. 410 West 42nd Street. Tickets: $18. Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mat Sun 2 pm.
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