'Molly Sweeney': A drama of blindness and vision

Molly Sweeney, a 1994 play by playwright Brian Friel, is now in performance by the Irish Heritage Theatre. It is the story of a blind woman who has the chance to restore her vision. She is reluctant, but the two men in her life urge her to undergo the surgery.

Under the direction of Peggy Mecham, the stage design is as poetic as the script. The parquet floor is battleship gray, like a raft marooned at sea. Molly sits stage center, sandwiched between two men - the one comic, the other tragic. Behind each figure is a suspended stained-glass panel.

Molly Sweeney is a roundtable of monologues, with light streaming through the colored glass behind the one speaking. Thus we learn the story through the lens of each character, while the other two sit shrouded in semi-darkness. In this production, the striking physical bearing of the actors and the stage set are often as compelling as Friel's lyrical language.

In the early going, Kirsten Quinn's Molly radiates the joyous confidence of a blind woman at peace with herself. Molly's eyes change inflection when she regains sight, but Molly retains the tentative movement of the blind, suggesting a desperate need to hold onto her familiar world of tactile sensation.

Molly slightly stirs or changes facial expression when another speaks, as though her blindness has uniquely empowered her to overcome estrangement. It is a subtle but vivid contrast to the two men, husband Frank and Mr. Rice, who are stock-still when not speaking, isolated in their private worlds.

Frank is a roguish vagabond who chases after crack-brained causes, and Ethan Lipkin's comical, quirky movement underscores his chronic restlessness. Michael Toner is more stolid as the ophthalmologist, Mr. Rice. Like a defrocked priest, Rice renounces the doctor title and drinks whiskey as he nurses old, painful memories.

Both men need to cure Molly for their own redemption. They are not malicious, just blind to her true reality. It is partly to please them that Molly proceeds, hoping for a "brief excursion" into the world of light. But when that excursion takes on a tragic life of its own, Molly Sweeney turns into an evocative parable about the human condition.

"Molly Sweeney." Through Oct. 15 at the Walnut St. Theater Studio 5, 825 Walnut St. Tickets: $10-$25. Information: irishheritagetheatre.org