96. I CAN
SEE CLEARLY NOW (THE WHEELCHAIR ON MY FACE)
As
a child, Sonya Kelly had terrible eyesight, measured at 20/900, which would
probably be considered legally blind. According to her one-woman play, in which
she both wrote and stars, she so cleverly masked her disability that her
physical ineptitudes were chalked up to her clumsiness, not her vision, until
she’d been in grade school for three years. When her eyesight finally was
diagnosed professionally, she was fitted with a pair of what we used to call
coke bottle lenses (her play’s title refers to the image of a wheelchair on her
face). Her kid’s joy at being able to see, however, was mitigated by her vanity
about having to wear such heavy, unattractive eyeglasses. Later in life, she
had an operation that allowed her to wear more normal spectacles, which is what
she employs in this 55-minute recounting of her youthful experiences, brought to
New York from its original staging for Ireland’s Fishamble: The New Play
Company. The production, winner of the Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh
Festival Fringe 2012, is part of Origin’s 1st Irish Theatre
Festival, now current in New York.
Ms. Kelly is a pleasant, fairly ordinary
looking young woman the traces of whose myopia are still present in her slightly
cross-eyed gaze. She has a lively, mildly engaging personality, and in telling
her tale uses a variety of voices to portray the grownups and children who misunderstood
or taunted her. Her story is filled with personal anecdotes of what it was like
growing up with her face practically pressed against everything she wanted to
look at. Among her memories is her childhood passion for Abba’s music (snatches
of which we hear), and her wish when she was able to get glasses that they be
the large sunglasses the group wears on one of its album covers. Ms. Kelly was lucky
to have a condition that needed only a simple eye test (recreated in the
narrative, using a large eye chart), followed by a fitting for glasses, to
rectify. This makes me curious as to how irrevocably sightless people who may have seen (heard)
the piece have reacted to her satirical commentary on the casual way people use the
concept of blindness in their daily discourse. Examples from the script: “Oh my
god, she’s so blind. She’s like really good looking and he’s so not,” or “Oh my
god, I’m so blind. I walked into my own reflection and called myself an asshole
for not saying excuse me. I really was so blind.”
The writing and performance, given
on a bare stage with only a white folding table, have a lighthearted
vivacity but, for all the strenuous efforts of Ms. Kelly and her
director, Gina Moxley, to wring humor out of the material, the results are
anything but hilarious. Nor, I'm afraid, does the occasional attempt at poignancy pluck one's heartstrings. Sourpuss that I am, I barely laughed, only managing to force a
smile now and then so that Ms. Kelly, performing in the tiny Theatre C at
59E59, might not be too depressed if her now improved vision allowed her to
spot my glum expression staring at her from the third row; it would take a sight
more cleverness to cure all this play’s comic blind spots. I’d like to
report that the audience picked up my slack in the mirth department, but, apart
from some murmuring chuckles now and then, few eyes were smiling, Irish or
otherwise.
