Short Eyes
Short Eyes won two Obies, six Tony nominations, and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best American play of 1973-’74. Thirty years later, it’s just kind of nauseatingly quaint. What middle school kid doesn’t know that a weak or effeminate prisoner faces the prospect of gang rape unless he becomes a stronger man’s bitch? Or that child molesters are despised and considered good as dead in the prison social structure? Or that you’ve got to watch your back in the shower? Or that guards are corrupt? The secret scandal of the 70s is today’s common knowledge.
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Unfortunately, Short Eyes is more interesting than good. The last production I saw used puppetlike headdresses–big foam penis-head hats, among others–to distract us from its frailties. Here, director Ron OJ Parson tries a strictly naturalistic approach, which means that the only thing standing between the play’s weaknesses and our suspension of disbelief is the ensemble. Which can’t hold the line. This is most disappointingly obvious in a scene where Davis (Greg Kinnear look-alike Andrew Kain Miller) opens up to fellow inmate Juan (Ivan Vega). Neither actor is bad, really, but neither can muster the force and skill necessary to make this absolutely crucial passage believable.
Price: $20
