BRIGIT SAINT BRIGIT THEATRE CO.
Molly Sweeney
Written by Brian Friel
Directed by Cathy MW Kurz
February 23 - March 10*
First Central Congregational Church
*March 1 Performance w/ Audio Description
In this year’s annual BSB tribute to Irish writers, Molly Sweeney, Irish master playwright Brian Friel illuminates the difference between seeing and knowing in a story told through three shifting perspectives: that of Molly, a fiercely independent, lifelong blind woman; her husband, Frank; and Mr. Rice, the doctor who believes he might restore her eyesight.
Who are these people? What do they want and why? Does Molly want to regain her eyesight? Yes. Perhaps.
But what "vision" will blaze through that towering framework of perspective that Frank and Rice have long come to embrace. What will be true? She doesn't know. And neither do they.
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"The Universe is not obliged to conform to what we consider comfortable or plausible."
-Carl Sagan
How do you know what you know? And what does it mean: to know?
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Who constructed the magical frame through which we "determine reality"? Physics and dimension and spiritual stirring and chemistry and sensing and morality and philosophy and the resonance of intuition and music and words and breath and movement.
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Because, you know, it was constructed. We learn it through our teachers, families, reading, experience, history, rules. And through our eyesight. And without it. And then, we think, we know. And we tack up another "reality" on the board for all to learn and accept.
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Like a massive camera, that order-making frame directs what we perceive with a lens so wide we forget it's there. And millions of generations of humans have directed our "free" vision of eye and mind's eye through it. It exhilarates and reveals. It limits and stifles. It's often true. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes, both at once.
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Featuring: Melissa King, Scott Working, and Michael Lyon.
Stage Management by Sabrina Kinney. Directed by Cathy M. W. Kurz.
REVIEWS
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". . . an astonishing work, one that acutely examines its characters and asks us to make similar observations of ourselves. Not least important, it’s a highly entertaining play, often delivering laughs while posing its questions. . . .Those questions stay with you." (New York Times)
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"So good it actually made me shiver." (Wall Street Journal )
"Emotional, comical, scientific, and philosophical . . . moving performance." (The New Yorker)