With ‘Molly Sweeney,’ a Visionary Playwright, Brian Friel, Focuses on Blindness and Learning To See

“Molly Sweeney,” Brian Friel’s stirring account of a blind woman who regains some of her sight through surgery, only to lose it again, had its premiere at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1994; four years later, Ireland would pass the Employment Equality Act, prohibiting discrimination against disabled people who had or were seeking jobs. In our century, protecting and promoting those with disabilities in all fields, including theater, has become an even higher priority around the world.This is good news, of course, but it should be noted that “Sweeney” — the fourth play being produced as part of Irish Repertory Theatre’s “The Friel Project,” a high point of the past season — is not concerned with blindness solely, or even primarily, as a physical condition. Throughout the play, its three characters — Molly, who has been blind she was 10 months old; her husband, Frank, who has become obsessed with sight on both physiological and philosophical levels; and Mr. Rice, the surgeon who sees in Molly an opportunity to revive a once thriving career — refer to and demonstrate the differences between seeing and knowing, or understanding.Even after Molly’s vision is partly restored, she must, as both her doctor and her husband recognize, “learn to see” — that is, to use the one sense she has been deprived of since infancy to try to understand the world around her. As it turns out, this task proves even more overwhelming than Frank, Mr. Rice, or Molly herself had anticipated. Unlike the previous plays presented in “Friel Project,” “Sweeney” is essentially a series of monologues, recalling previous events. The superb actors who perform under Charlotte Moore’s sensitive, vigorous direction — Sarah Street plays Molly and two Irish Rep veterans, John Keating and Rufus Collins, are respectively cast as Frank and Mr. Rice — each occupy one of three chairs forming the centerpiece of Charlie Corcoran’s lean, handsome set, addressing the audience rather than acknowledging one another.John Keating in ‘Molly Sweeney.’ Carol RoseggThe characters’ interwoven dilemmas reinforce how, 30 years after its premiere, “Sweeney” seems prophetic in emphasizing the limits of superficial abilities most of us take for granted. As a blind woman, it is revealed, Molly was contented and highly functional; Mr. Rice, remembering their first meeting, notes, “I liked her calm and her independence, the confident way she shook my hand and found a seat for herself with her white cane. And when she spoke of her disability, there was no self-pity, no hint of resignation.” The surgeon, in contrast, refers repeatedly to his own emotional and spiritual darkness, the product of being abandoned by his wife for one of his distinguished colleagues, and notes how this burden lifts as he operates on Molly. He speaks of being “restored,” though “not fully,” using much the same terminology as he does in referring to her vision.While doctor and patient never interact, and there is no suggestion of anything improper having occurred between them, the relationship between the lonely man and the married woman is plainly fraught. Mr. Rice admits that when they met, Molly “reminded me instantly of my wife”; later, she recalls him praising her early post-surgical progress as “splendid” and “excellent” — words her devoted but stingy father had used in trying to raise her largely alone, as her mother spent substantial periods hospitalized “with her nerves.”Frank, with his unbridled enthusiasm — and his lack of gainful employment — is a foil to these other men, and Mr. Keating imbues him with a restless, infectious energy and good-natured humor. Mr. Collins’s elegant, introspective, tortured Mr. Rice complements this performance, making it clear how Molly might be drawn to and ultimately repelled by both men.Yet what’s most striking in “Molly Sweeney,” and most sadly ironic, is the self-possession that defines the title character before her operation, and how it gradually deteriorates afterward. In one of the production’s most moving scenes, Ms. Street’s Molly recounts how, attending a party the night before her surgery, she danced in angry defiance.“How can they know what they are taking away from me?” Molly asked herself, referring to Mr. Rice and Frank. “How do they know what they are offering me? They don’t. They can’t.” Because to at least some extent, as Friel’s play reminds us, we are all — sighted and blind — dancing in the dark.

With ‘Molly Sweeney,’ a Visionary Playwright, Brian Friel, Focuses on Blindness and Learning To See

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