TWO SMALL BODIES
Using this criterion Neal Bell is an exceptionally talented playwright. His two-act psychosexual murder mystery, Two Small Bodies, is as cliched as they come. Eileen (Laurie Buck), a struggling cocktail waitress at a local strip club, wakes up one morning to find that her two young children are missing. Lieutenant Brann (Jim Rafalin), the hardened, predatorially sexual cop assigned to the case, quickly decides that the children are dead and that Eileen is the prime suspect. The play consists of quasi-interrogation scenes as Brann literally moves into Eileen’s house and these two deeply wounded people slowly begin to unravel and intertwine.
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The result is a production full of tension, little of which is ever released. Because the characters craftily mask their true intentions from each other, the evening becomes seductive and mysterious. This production demonstrates that actors and directors who understand a scene’s fundamental dynamics need do very little overtly to communicate a great deal.
