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‘The Bluest Eye’ @ Horizon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW “The Bluest Eye” Grade: B- 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays. 8:30 p.m. Saturdays. 5 p.m. Fridays. Through Sept. 2. $20-$25. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave., Little Five Points. 404-584-7450, horizontheatre.com.
The verdict: Morrison classic makes a respectable transition from page to stage.
Pecola Breedlove is a memorable character, as anyone who has read Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” will tell you. Her essential tragedy is her persistent belief in her own ugliness, a condition that causes her to wish for a kind of genetic intervention.
“Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes,” Morrison writes of the 11-year-old girl, who is the subject of scorn and abuse from nearly everyone she encounters, including her own parents.
Among the problems with Morrison’s lush and poetic first novel is that it has three beginnings. It also gives away the ending right from the start.
Just in time for the National Black Arts Festival, playwright Lydia R. Diamond’s fastidiously faithful stage treatment of the Nobel Prize winner’s beloved little book has arrived at Horizon Theatre, and no one seems to mind that Diamond has failed to tidy up the novel’s ever-shifting point of view or capitalize on Morrison’s nakedly dancing dialogue.
It would be unfair to say that director Thomas W. Jones II’s staging is poorly done. It’s not. But the heavily populated show is busy, and the contemporary music is all wrong for a story set in the 1940s. This, however, is not grounds for dismissal. For Morrison’s characters are so indelibly sculpted here, their stories such a whirlwind of sadness and music, that the show somehow manages to ring true.
Truly, bluely.
Like raindrops falling on a scorching hot roof, Morrison’s feverish language almost evaporates in a cloud of plot and personalities. Jones seems determined to make this show clock in at two hours, and by Jove he makes it at warp speed.
Here is the set. It is very spare. Here are the actresses. They are very pretty. Here is Pecola’s Mommy and Daddy. They are not very nice. Here are her friends. Aren’t they cute? Play, everyone, play. Is it time to go home yet? Yes, it is time.
The good news is that 11-year-old Pecola is played by Joaquina Kalukango, a mesmerizing young actress who recently graduated Tri-Cities High School and is headed to the Juilliard School. Keep your eyes peeled for Kalukango. She’s the real deal.
Carol Mitchell-Leon and Neal Hazard are quite acceptable as Pecola’s parents, Cholly and Polly. Their fight scene — which Morrison so exactingly choreographs in the novel — is a classic. Hazard’s interpretation of Cholly is so incisive that his horrific crime becomes understandable: The man is numb with self-loathing.
As the Mama of Pecola’s friends Claudia (Bobbi Lynne Scott) and Frieda (Jessica Frances Dukes), Veronica Byrd gives a deliciously sassy approximation of a high-strutting, feather-ruffling mother hen. This is the one character who can be fully over-the-top and still authentic. Her comedic presence is mandatory.
In the end, here’s what matters: Diamond could have done better by “The Bluest Eye.” But Horizon probably could not have done much better by Diamond. “The Bluest Eye” is flawed, but even under the bright lights of theater, it’s still a gem. The National Black Arts Festival should be proud to wear it.
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