Molly Sweeney
Brian Friel’s 1979 Faith Healer, seen last year in a splendid TurnAround Theatre production that relocated to Steppenwolf’s studio, concerns an itinerant miracle worker whose mysterious gift for curing the blind leads to his destruction; structured as a series of long monologues by the healer, his wife, and his assistant, the play turns a strange scandal into a cross between Irish folk drama and Greek tragedy. In his haunting 1994 drama Molly Sweeney–beautifully directed on Steppenwolf’s main stage by Kyle Donnelly, who’s making a most welcome return to Chicago theater–Friel again probes a curious little episode for depths of meaning few other writers today could approach. His story of a blind woman who undergoes surgery to restore her sight–inspired by the medical case study “To See and Not See” by neurologist Oliver Sacks–takes on mythic resonance as Friel weighs themes of vision and understanding in human beings’ misguided interaction with their inner and outer worlds.
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Blind since the age of ten months, Molly Sweeney is a massage therapist who undergoes surgery at the urging of her husband Frank, a do-gooder easily obsessed by causes he knows little about. Having failed as a cheese farmer–the Iranian goats he imported to Ireland couldn’t function effectively in their new environment–Frank undertakes curing Molly’s disability. Armed with a file of factoids gleaned from research at the local library, he brings his wife to Paddy Rice, a once-famous surgeon who’s retreated from the international spotlight to a low-profile position at a rural Irish hospital. Just as Frank dreams of a “miracle cure” for his wife, Rice indulges in the “opulent fantasy” of a reputation restored by his surgical skill. But neither of them ever gets around to asking Molly how she feels. After all, as Rice asks himself, what has she got to lose?
Though these elements provide the play with a rich subtext, the story is fascinating on its own terms–in part because it’s based on documented cases of failed efforts to restore a blind person’s sight and then teach her or him “how to see.” Friel’s dense script skillfully interweaves informative clinical terminology and statistics (even as it criticizes men’s reliance on such data) with subtle puns, offbeat allusions, and gorgeously phrased prose poetry. But most important, the story functions as compelling drama, because the words always reflect the imperfect perspectives of the three characters. As in Faith Healer, the play is a procession of monologues–though where Faith Healer consists of four very long speeches that can tax an audience’s attention, here the monologues alternate fairly frequently. This script not only has a more fluid pace but a naturally building suspense, as flashbacks allow the audience to piece together the story through the way Molly, Frank, and Rice confirm and contradict one another.
