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Robinson’s portrayal of Pecola’s final descent from meek loneliness to utter destruction is devastating. When the audience is shown Cholly’s backstory, which does not excuse his behavior toward his wife and daughter but puts his madness in context, a moment of tenderness is quickly turned into a scene of oppression and violence. Pecola bears the burden of generational self-hate. The world is not kind to the Breedloves, conditioning them to despise their Blackness. Then, she recounts how her husband mocked her appearance after the episode, so now she avoids the cinema. While the film plays behind the actress, she mimics biting into a piece of candy, losing her tooth. At one point, Davis delivers a heartbreaking monologue about how she used to go to the movies and imagine what it would be like to look like Jean Harlow. Breedlove is a cleaning woman with a bum foot and a missing tooth. Garrett play Pecola’s parents in “The Bluest Eye,” locked in a violent relationship that scars their daughter. The irony of this “ballet” versus what the scene contains works very well, daring the audience to chuckle at a scene where a crazed drunk beats a disabled woman.ĭionna D. Davis and Garrett engage in slow-motion lifts and tangles, clobbering each other with weapons.
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There are changes in lighting, and a symphony suddenly swells on the soundtrack. Davis) and Cholly battle each other in their kitchen, the sisters see the scene (designed by fight director Kristin Storla) as a hilarious dance. Thus, if the central platform onstage transitions from a bed to a porch for the next scene, Claudia and Frieda sulk while moving it, and their parents point out how the work should be done.Ī bolder touch from the director is a scene of shocking domestic violence between Pecola’s parents that is brazenly played for laughs, even though the content of the scene is horrific. One of the smaller touches that fleshes out the setting is when, during scene transitions, the actors adjust and remove set pieces and props themselves while remaining in character. Yet, because Claudia has the audience’s ear, her little-girl reasoning provides a lot of humor.ĭirector Owolabi makes a lot of assured, bold choices in how The Bluest Eye is presented. Her mother views her as ungrateful for destroying the doll. When Claudia receives a blond, white baby doll as a gift, she terrorizes and destroys it with zeal, for she hates its perceived “beauty.” The character is impulsive, quick to anger, and she has her reasons for it, though adult characters don’t often see the logic in her thinking. The sisters’ family situation is more stable and caring than Pecola’s, though their mother, played by Tanya Freeman, is also very fussy, which provides the play with some lightness and humor. Claudia and Frieda’s outfits change with the season, giving the audience a point of reference in a story that jumps back and forth in time. The story of The Bluest Eye is primarily told by Claudia and Frieda, played by Brittany Deneen Hines and Kerri Garrett, two feisty sisters around Pecola’s age who don’t completely grasp why the bleak circumstances are unfolding. This material would be heavy and unbearable, except that the play, directed by Ibi Owolabi, captures the same voice and wit in its narration as the novel. Garrett) will rape and impregnate her before its end. The play - as with the book before it - lets us know in the opening moments that Pecola’s father Cholly (Dai’Sean L. Pecola prays to God for blue eyes in the hope that the world will see her, that someone will love her. Pecola studies Dick and Jane books for early readers, identifying how the white, blue-eyed Jane is adored within the stories, surrounded by adoring parents and friends who always want to play with her. She believes in her ugliness because of how her community in 1940s Lorain, Ohio, ignores her. Niara Simone Robinson, a recent New York University graduate, makes a powerful Atlanta debut, bringing heartbreaking vulnerability to a character much younger than the actress.