Seeing the Best in ‘Sweeney’

A voice out of the darkness.

A radiant presence in the light.

A deceptively simple story that grows richer and more complex as it comes to us in flashes of theatrical lightning, interwoven chronicles of hope and dream, accusation and self-justification, joy and sorrow.

I’m describing my response to the current Mark Taper Forum production, Brian Friel’s “Molly Sweeney.” Unhappily for those of us who love the play, Times reviewer Don Shirley did not share that response. “Molly Sweeney was blind,” he wrote. “Then she could see.” The power of Friel’s writing is not apparent in a summary that inevitably flattens what matters so much and is so special about the work--the cunning revelation of characters and context, and the intricate texture of perception, memory and experience the playwright creates as he allows his characters to tell their overlapping stories.

In Ireland, in Donegal, in the small town of Ballybeg, Molly, blind since infancy, lives a confident, happy and productive life. She marries Frank Sweeney, a chronically unemployed dreamer whose latest passion is for an operation to restore Molly’s sight. There have only been 20 such cases in a thousand years, but why shouldn’t Molly be the 21st, if there’s any chance at all? What does she have to lose? And Mr. Rice, a once-promising eye surgeon going through his own period of darkness, can’t help seeing this “chance” for Molly as a new chance for him, too--although he does have some idea what brave, radiant Molly has to lose.

Friel sets before us three fascinating individuals who relate the central events of Molly Sweeney in interconnected, shifting monologues that come to feel like a kind of grand dialogue with the audience as it goes about its business of listening to, analyzing and reassembling the pieces of the story to learn what actually happened to these people, what the truth is--and then to decide what it means.

More than that, “Molly Sweeney” is a play for all those who have ever thrilled to the primal joy at the heart of storytelling: the voice of a loving adult conjuring a world of adventures for a child at bedtime; the collaboration of broadcast voices and listeners’ imaginations around a living room radio; the stranger’s tale--at a party, on a train, in a barroom, around a campfire; or the story itself made flesh by living, breathing actors in the always unique, living communion of theater.

Reviews from a number of Shirley’s colleagues, not only in Los Angeles, but in New York and London as well, together with comments and responses from Taper audiences, indicate that many share my appreciation of the superior quality of Friel’s storytelling. “Molly Sweeney” is the evocation by one of the master playwrights of our time of an unforgettable heroine, who tells us a story that has life-and-death importance for her. It is a new story, told in a new way, an exploration, in a shimmering display of theatrical language, of the difference between sight and insight, and of our responsibilities on this Earth, individual and collective, to ourselves and to one another.

On the Taper stage, Molly Sweeney’s beautiful face, upturned to catch the light, reflects it. In that reflection, the audience gains both sight and insight.