The Bluest Eye
at the Duncan YMCA Chernin Center for the Arts
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The central character in Morrison’s tragic, poetic 1970 novel, Pecola Breedlove, is an 11-year-old black girl living in Lorain, Ohio (Morrison’s hometown), in 1941. Pecola desperately wants blue eyes–as blue as Shirley Temple’s, as blue as Jane’s in her Dick and Jane primer. She believes that blue eyes will make her beautiful and loved–perhaps even as loved as the little white girl her emotionally stunted mother, a domestic worker, cares for during the day (a child represented by a large white baby doll in this production). We know from the outset the tragedy that’s befallen Pecola: she’s pregnant with her father’s child.
Neither Morrison nor Diamond allows easy vilification–even Pecola’s drunken father, Cholly, is a figure of pity. In one horrifying scene, his first awkward attempts at lovemaking as a teenager are turned into an ugly rape-by-proxy when he and the girl are found by two white men, who taunt Cholly to “get on with it, and make it good.” Morrison doesn’t excuse what Cholly does to Pecola, but seeing this early incident unfold gives us insight into how Cholly’s sexual appetites have been twisted by hate and impotence.
Price: $10
This production includes many beautiful moments, and Smith and set designers Jackie and Rick Penrod have made excellent use of the proscenium stage, framing it with tall lighted columns representing stacks of books and with filmy pieces of fabric, from which the guides emerge as Layla’s dreams and memories unfold. But there’s a frustrating lack of specificity to the poet’s voice–both Shange’s and that of her onstage surrogate. We see the passion connecting Layla with the narcissistic, cruel Yves (the imposing Derrick Cole Wesby) in Lisa Johnson-Willingham’s steamy dance interludes. And we can sense Layla’s longing to be free of that unhealthy passion in well-played humorous exchanges between the graceful, magnetic Days and the actors portraying her saucy friends.
Price: $25
