death penalty news June 14, 2004
USA: Cast saves tired drama that explores death penalty When a murderer kills, he also takes the lives of those closest to his victim. This is hardly an original thought, but it usually goes unspoken, unlike the arguments for and against capital punishment that occupy much of Claudia Allen's play "Unspoken Prayers." Those positions are no less valid for being shopworn, but they still come across as warmed over. A great deal of Allen's play has a been-there, done-that feeling, but Harry Wetzel's production at Detroit Repertory Theatre nearly overcomes a script better suited to Lifetime, the cable TV channel that specializes in generic movies about families in pain. The family hurting in Allen's play suffers the murder of a teenage daughter. The killing occurs offstage, soon after the audience meets Sara and just about falls in love with her: She practices Bach's "Minuet in G" on the clarinet, quits to play a comical computer game, shows her mom how to play the game, then drives off to rehearse the Christmas pageant. She never comes home, but this isn't the last we see of Sara. Returning as a ghost (there's an original idea), Sara skips about cheerfully and converses with her survivors. An arrest sets off the debate about capital punishment. The father favors the death penalty; the mother and sister are opposed. The killer, never seen, is a boy about Sara's age toward whom she had acted kindly. As Sara's parents and sister cope with their grief, or fail to, they are besieged by reporters. Allen depicts them as intrusive and insensitive (there's an original idea), but in a choice that breaks the movie-of-the-week conventions, she has them wearing clownish fake noses and fake glasses. Another departure from the TV format: The play is made up of short, sometimes very short, scenes. Neither is enough to save the play from terminal banality, but Wetzel and his cast are. Leah Smith, as the mother, pumps genuine pain into her words, gestures and facial expressions. Harold Hogan, as the father, provides stonier contrast, channeling all his pain into a head of steam for vengeance. Ebony McClain is bubbly and adolescent as Sara, but she has a tendency to mumble beyond that of a typically uncommunicative teenager. My-Ishia Cason-Brown as surviving sister Becca radiates the confident satisfaction of the college kid discovering she can get by away from home. Besides directing, Wetzel designed the set, a handsome assemblage, part realistic, part impressionistic, that depicts a living room, a bedroom, a college dorm room and a police station. And, bless his heart, Wetzel has seen to it that his actors actually can play the "Minuet in G," when called upon, separately: McClain on clarinet, Smith on violin, Hogan on harmonica. This sort of detail, too often neglected, makes a world of difference. 'Unspoken Prayers' THREE STARS out of 4 stars 8:30 p.m. Thu..-Fri., 3 & 8:30 p.m. Sat., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sun. Through June 27 Detroit Repertory Theatre 13103 Woodrow Wilson, Detroit 313-868-1347 $17 1 hour, 30 minutes (source: Theater Review, Detroit Free Press)
