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Timothy Eric plays Soaphead, a defrocked pastor. Credit: Everett Welch<\/p>\nHouston theater is on a high for the start of the new year. What an incredible lineup. Witness a rejuvenated Beauty and the Beast and the vibrant, movement-filled circus romance Water for Elephants from Broadway at the Hobby; the stirring WW I-inspired Silent Night at Houston Grand Operathe world premiere, searing high-tech adaptation of Dostoevsky \u2018s Crime and Punishment from A.D. Players; and, now, from The Ensemble Theatre, we are graced with the poetic and emotionally galvanic production of Nobel Award-winning Toni Morrison\u2019s first novel, The Bluest Eye.<\/p>\n
Adapted in 2005 by Lydia R. Diamond from Morrison\u2019s first published book (1970), Eye is Ur-Morrison. Told from various vantage points by many of the drama\u2019s characters, it is fragrant and simple, infused with rich language, deep understanding, blistering truth, complex motivations, as it casts a cold unblinking eye on the insidious, often conscious or unconscious, effect of racism, and the profound influence by dysfunctional families over a child\u2019s self-esteem and ultimate mental health. White or black bigotry can boil into a lethal brew.<\/p>\n
Poignant and always razor-sharp, the play is dream-like in its use of flashbacks, flash forwards, and small vignettes of life in Christian, white Lorain, Ohio, during the waning days of the Depression. Our protagonist is young black Pecola Breedlove (a startling effective and sympathetic Kiya Green), who ever since birth has been labeled \u201cugly\u201d by family, friends, and the community.<\/p>\n
Taunted by an scolding mother who shows her no love (Brittny Bush, in a magnetic performance); her alcoholic abusive father Cholly (a radiantly debauched Kory Laquess Pullam); her schoolmates Freida and Claudia (Est\u00e9e Burks and Caprice Carter, playing children to perfection); a Greek chorus of town yentas; and the prejudiced candy store owner who won\u2019t touch her hand when she hands him her pennies for Mary Jane, her favorite candy, Pecola is beset on all sides, inundated, crushed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want to disappear,\u201d she cries out to no one. What she desperately wants is to be white, like Shirley Temple or the bonnet-wearing little girl on the candy wrapper, or like Maureen, the new girl at school, who is \u201chigh yellow\u201d and can pass for white. If only she had blue eyes, she prays, \u201ctruly bluey nice eyes,\u201d everything would be different. She wouldn\u2019t be invisible. She\u2019d be pretty, accepted, and loved.<\/p>\n
Impregnated by her father in his drunken lust\/hate feelings for his daughter, Pecola gets tossed out of school then tossed \u201coutside\u201d when Cholly burns down the house. As a last attempt to fulfill her dreams, she visits the creepy misanthrope Soaphead, a defrocked pastor who tells fortunes and has his own love\/hate relationship to an indifferent God. <\/p>\n
Timothy Eric plays Soaphead, a defrocked pastor. Credit: Everett Welch<\/p>\n
The magnificent booming-voiced Timothy Eric puts this show in the palm of his hand as he delivers his narrations with a steely, icy precision that borders way too close to the edge. Somewhat like the wise fool in an August Wilson drama, he speaks the truth but no one listens.<\/p>\n
To grant her wish, Soaphead tricks Pecola into killing the landlady\u2019s dog that he hates. If the mangy critter doesn\u2019t stir, then her wish will be granted. If the dog moves, her wish is denied. Unbeknownst, Pecola has given the dog poisoned meat. (The whimpering moans of the dying dog, like all the sound work from Adrian Washington \u2013 children playing in the distance, the slaps of family fights, to a raft of \u201940s pop music in ironic juxtaposition to the story\u2019s darkness \u2013 is frightfully top notch.)<\/p>\n
Pecola fiercely rejects this false prophesy. She knows her eyes will change color, they just have to. In desperation for love, she goes mad as she spends every waking moment staring into her hand mirror, waiting\u2026waiting\u2026waiting.<\/p>\n
The Ensemble team has gone into overdrive on this production. Every facet works: from the period shabby costumes by Krystal Uchem, the atmospheric lighting from Kris Phillips, the dilapidated wood fence that surrounds the action by set designer Winifred Sowell, the period-specific hairdos by\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sharon Ransom, and, most importantly, the exceptionally prescient direction from Eileen J. Morris, the Ensemble\u2019s artistic director.<\/p>\n
You couldn\u2019t ask for a more insightful eye than that of maestro Morris. She sees every nuance in the script, every beat, every buildup and climax. She knows actors and when to unleash them and when to hold them taut. She has interpreted this unrelenting but all-to-human drama with abiding warmth, deep admiration, and uncanny know-how. She totally gets it. Under Morris\u2019 expertise, the love and wonder and tragedy embedded by Diamond into Morrison\u2019s evocative prose is a joy to behold. The Bluest Eye is one of Ensemble\u2019s all-time crown jewels.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this detailed and evocative play where everybody is broken, their sad histories cry out through injustice, indifference, or plain hatred and violence. Like recessive genes, bad behavior becomes inter-generational, unsuspected at best, willing at worst, but passed down nonetheless. The innocent are the least spared. That\u2019s the play\u2019s true drama.<\/p>\n
At some point in our lives, to make us whole and appreciated, loved and wanted, don\u2019t we all wish for blue eyes or its equivalent? Yet, beware. If you wish too hard for the unattainable, that dream might betray. Wish wisely, if you can.<\/p>\n
The Bluest Eye continues through February 22 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at The Ensemble Theatre, 3535 Main Street. For more information, call 713-520-0055 or visit ensemblehouston.com. $35-$45.<\/p>\n