A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes« Go Back To Stage

Many of us are TV crime show fanatics. We must be, or why would there be “Law and Oder” ( many versions) on day and night, or “CSI” or “Criminal Minds”. Mystery books are also best sellers and in the last few years, we have been witness to some very intense theater dealing with cops and “their stories”! If you love police stories and if you loved ” A Steady Rain”, the new World Premiere of Joshua Rollins’ ”A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes” will suit you to a “T”. This is a powerful 90 minute drama that deals with how we as individuals would deal in a situation that could damage our lives forever. What if, under circumstances that would cost you everything you have built in your life, you had an opportunity to do one thing , even if wrong, that would in fact allow you to continue on your path? Would you take that step?

In this taut story, directed by Matt Miller on the tiny, intimate stage of The Second Stage, in Wrigleyville, Pine Box Theater, we watch as a young man is being questioned by two police officers about his whereabouts this evening. It turns out that an undercover policewoman who has been working the streets as ahooker is missing, and has been for several hours. As it turns out , the cops ,Landy ( a powerful performance by Steve Pickering) the missing cops ex-partner and perhaps more and Goggins ( the always reliable Karen Aldridge) who earlier in her career was a partner of his as well, so there are some strange ties to the cops involved. William ( Vincent Teninty, truly handles this role with just the right touch to make him real, someone we might know, or even our self).

Here he was out for a fun evening with his buddies, a sort of Bachelor Party at a strip club tossing down a few and the next thing he knows, twocops come to pick him up at the local IHOP for questioning as his fingerprints are all over the place. The well written script uses flashbacks to unravel the mystery of what really happened that night. There is another suspect as well, Darnel ( Sean Parris) who it turns out is seeking vengeance from officer Lucy ( deftly handed by Audrey Francis) who he feels is responsible for his brother’s death. These are the main characters in the story. The other performer in this production is Lucy Sandy who plays several roles, each with its own identity and look.

During the weaving of this story, we learn more about the meaning of the title as officer Goggins, during the interrogation tell William a story 9 a story that is closely related to the playwright’s own story). She was driving down the street on a bright and sunny day. The sun was so bright tht in order to proceed, she had no choice but to squint. As she hit an extra special burst of sun, a young man riding a bicycle came from nowhere and she almost hit him would have surely resulted in death. No one was around, but she thought about what would have happened if she had hit him. Jail? Worse? The question arises – “What would you do to protect your life never hurt the ones who surround you”?

Rollins tells a powerful story and Miller creates a canvas that will stay in your mind and memory even after you leave the theater. There are some great fight scenes (Matt Hawkins) in this very small space with a minimal set(Grant Sabin) that works! No fancy costumes, no elaborate set, some very solid and important lighting (Julian Pike) and the original music (Anthony Schneider) and sound design ( Joe Court)along with the props (Zach Stinnett) are the icing on the cake. I have a feeling that this play will end up moving to a larger theate along the way and perhaps make its way to New York ( as did “A Steady Rain”- let’s hope they don’t bring in different actors as thiscast is perfect. I will not reveal any more as the mystery needs to be unraveled before each viewer or it doesn’t work.

Literally decades of Law & Order have gotten us accustomed to the standard formulas that make the police procedural an ideal television genre: a new case each week so each episode stands on its own; linear, step-by-step storytelling; a cast of regular characters made interchangeable by keeping their personal lives offscreen. What makes Rollins’s breathless new play, essentially a police procedural for the stage, so successful is the way he turns those familiar tropes on their heads.

Grant Sabin’s one-room set handily evokes both a seedy interrogation room and a seedier motel room, both places average-schmo William (a perfectly weaselly Teninty) finds himself desperate to escape late one night after a boozy outing to a South Side strip club. As the play opens, William awaits questioning by a pair of Chicago officers, sharply embodied by Aldridge and Pickering—a prickly pair who stoke new fire in the classic good cop, bad cop construction.

Whether and how William arrived in the motel room earlier that night, and how that relates to a vice cop gone missing in the hours between, are the answers the cops seek (and Pickering’s intense rogue officer is more than willing to beat them out of William). Rollins alternates these present-moment scenes with flashbacks to earlier in the evening, incrementally revealing William’s fate. But Aldridge and Pickering have plenty of back story of their own; in fact, every character here has layers of secrets they’d love to keep hidden. Rollins’s plotting slackens a bit at the climax, but Miller’s direction stays taut.

My police background (formerly with the Chicago Police Department) and my love for police procedural novels, films and stage plays gives me a sophisticated eye for authenticity in police dramas. I easily see flaws and unrealistic elements that mare many stories but actor/playwright Joshua Rollins’ first full length play, A Girl With Sun In Her Eyes, is a masterpiece! It is one of the finest world premieres I’ve seen since Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain. Rollins’ work is flawless and so real it was scary. This action-packed mystery will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout its 85 minutes.

It is 6 am at a South Side Chicago police station and two detectives are frantically trying to find an undercover female police officer who has gone ‘missing’ for several hours. Detective Landy (Steve Pickering) is the raging, wound-too-tight cop determined to use any means to find his former partner including physical torture, if necessary. Together with an Internal Affairs detective, Goggins (Karen Aldridge), her self with an agenda with Landy and one for Lucy, the missing undercover cop, also works the investigation.

We see Landy and Goggins take turns interrogating the last person to see Lucy alive – William (Vincent Teninity in a terrific turn). We wonder if, how and why William could be involved in Lucy’s disappearance? Fueled by excellent staging that flashbacks to dramatize Lucy’s (Audrey Francis in a powerful performance) last hours. The action has strong fight choreography with smartly designed scenes that plant enough items and hints as to what actually happened and why it happened that we stay fully engaged in the mystery.

This raw police procedural has hints of the TV series The Shield but is much tighter written and more realistic as we see a man trying to answer the question about how far one would go to protect his life after making some poor decisions while out on a bender. We see the other suspect, Darnel (Sean Parris) has both motive and opportunity to harm Lucy. Did he do something to Lucy? We follow the interaction between William and Lucy as we finally get the resolution of this complicated story. This show is fast-paced and riveting. It’ll leave you blown away. A great cast of mostly Equity actors with tight direction by Matt Miller does justice to Joshua Rollins’ play. We see how a slight change of time can change the outcome of an event that can change a life forever. The gray areas that colors events are fully depicted in this expertly drawn mystery. Don’t miss this dynamic show. This play is the hit of the summer.

A Girl with Sun in Her Eyes could be this year's hit cop play, like 2008's A Steady Rain (which ended on Broadway with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman). Like Keith Huff's hit, this gritty new play is an increasingly tense good-cop/bad-cop story set chiefly in the barren holding room of a local precinct. Steve Pickering is all-too-convincing as the sweating, menacing brutal bad cop Landy, while Karen Aldridge plays the far-more-sympathetic good cop Goggins, with the focus and quiet authority she so often brings to roles.

However, Goggins is the third side of a triangle between Landy and Lucy, another cop on the vice squad posing as a hooker, who's crossed the line to entrapment and vigilantism. The play's tension is in the relationship between Landy and Lucy (Audrey Francis casting a very dangerous aura), which is slowly revealed. We also meet two perps who've had the misfortune to fall prey, in a way, to Landy and Lucy: married father William (the totally believable Vincent Teninty), who's entrapped by Lucy at a strip club, and Darnel (nice arrogance from Sean Parris), the surviving brother of a man killed by Lucy.

It's this larger cast that marks the differences between A Steady Rain and A Girl with Sun in Her Eyes, despite similarities in look and feel. Huff's two cops narrate all action and describe the other characters, while Rollins shows all the characters and most of the actions. The result isn't as deep or strong or single-minded as A Steady Rain. Joshua Rollins's play is much more like a TV cop show, with several underwritten or unimportant roles. One is likely to feel drawn more strongly to one story line or relationship than the others, and wonder why Rollins didn't focus on that one. We never learn as much as we want to know about Landy and Lucy, nor does Rollins go deeply into the tension between Landy and Goggins over Lucy (who's recently returned to Vice after time off), nor the unspoken understanding that arises between the perps. Cop-procedural fanatics also might question how some things go down.

Then again, Rollins' intention never was to write the perfect cop drama. He explains in a program note that he's really attempting to explore choices we make, often in "horrible situations," and how even a small change in circumstances might substantially change the consequences. Along the way—almost as collateral dramatic damage—he explores collusion, deception, brutality and the exercise of power. That being said, Rollins' work is more than good enough to make quite a crackling show, especially with this cast and staged with conviction and economy by Matt Miller. It's a good rebirth for Pine Box after a three-year hiatus.