By Tom Sime, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – Playwright Melanie Marnich has said that "one of the advantages of working with a living writer is that you have a living play." That's encouraging, because it indicates there's still a possibility of saving "Blur," the Dallas Theater Center's regional premiere of Marnich's drama about a young woman going blind. It's an exciting event, in theory. But, right now, after two rounds of revisions for both its Manhattan Theater Club premiere last spring and for the Theater Center, where the writer has been in residence, "Blur" is still groping in the dark.
That's in spite of some magnificent performances. Sally Nystuen Vahle, a Dallas favorite for a decade now, plays Mom, an otherwise nameless single mother whose entire identity and life is bound up in her daughter, Dot. At 17, Dot, played by charming newcomer Maria Dizzia, still lives in the cocoon of safety her mother has created. She's fiercely protected, but isolated and apparently friendless. Then disaster comes along to upset the nest. It's Thanksgiving, and Mom has laid out a bountiful dinner for which she and Dot wear plastic Pilgrim hats. But Dot's in a strangely quiet mood, and we soon see that something is very wrong.
Mom: If this meat was smaller and had a sauce it would be called cuisine. Honey, would you hand me the salt? that's pepper, honey. Honey, hand me that spoon. Uh, this is a fork, sweetheart. How about the bread? That's the potatoes, hon? sweetie??
Dot: I can't see my feet, Mom! I can't see your face!
It turns out that Dot has been struck with Leber's Optic Atrophy, a disease that destroys the vision, often quite suddenly. It's genetically transmitted from mother to child, and Mom can't face the implications of her accidental legacy. She goes into full-tilt denial, and becomes all the more suffocating. But the fearsome card she's been dealt inspires Dot to try to get out more, and next thing we know she has friends and even a boyfriend. And she's fighting fiercely with her mother, who tries to keep her from breaking away by telling her these new friends only pity her. Then "Blur" takes a wrong turn. It's believable that Dot's misfortune would lead her to independence. But we don't follow her into the new world of blindness. As her vision deteriorates, she instead becomes a beacon of hope and love for her sighted friends, who include her defrocked former priest. We might want to know how she copes and adapts to her life's new conditions, what it's like to enter the world of blindness and blind people. But instead Dot ends up the leader of a houseful of cute eccentrics, a familiar comic motif that doesn't gratify or even address the emotions the story raises. There's one tantalizing scene in which Dot is trying to learn Braille and encounters a weird, chatty blind man at the library. Like us, Dot is both frightened and intrigued by his manic flirting, but we never see him again. Instead there's a numbing, pious conclusion with Dot virtually marching into the sunset. Blur is beautifully designed, with a boxy metallic set loaded with fun sliding panels that bring furniture and actors in and out efficiently. Slick lighting and music keep it hopping. But the play can seem just as mechanical as its set. Marnich can write excellent dialogue that touches on moving and essential mysteries. But if they were ever seriously explored in Blur, they?ve been workshopped and revised into oblivion.