This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brown chapter.
The Bluest Eye – Campus Review
Toni Morrison’s book, The Bluest Eye, is adapted by Lydia Diamond and directed by
Jarrett Key ’13. Performances ran on campus at Leeds Theatre this past week.
The story centres on Pecola Breedlove (Jenna Spencer ’14), a young girl enduring
psychological and sexual abuse in an unstable home in post-Depression Ohio. We watch
her parents fight, in an abstract stage dance that conveys violence while avoiding graphic
sensationalism. The marker of the Breedlove family, the audience is told, is their ugliness. Pecola
is fragile and insecure. Every night, she longs to look white. She desperately prays for blonde hair
and blue eyes, reminiscent of Shirley Temple and her Mary Jane candies, so that she might be
acknowledged, so that bad things stop happening to her and that she might be considered equal.
Most of the play is narrated by Pecola’s friends, Claudia MacTeer (Becky Bass ’13)
and her sister Frieda MacTeer (Shadura Lee ’16). The production shines as an adaptation of
Morrison’s novel. Its lyricality is translated to stage through music, rhythm and movement.
The play offers a moving window into post-Depression Ohio. It convincingly tells another’s
story, but is also compelling because it so successfully conjures universal feelings of love, hurt,
shame, inadequacy and sadness. Thoughtfully staged and excellently executed; violence, trauma,
pleasure and the pain of racial memory are all evoked with elegant choreography and wonderfully
nuanced acting. The Bluest Eye was a beautifully poignant experience.